by Nathan Long
A moment later von Graal closed his eyes, spread his arms, and began to whisper sibilant syllables under his breath. Soon a black fog formed around him, and slowly spread to envelop the whole of his company. The men shivered and the horses shied as they vanished into its billows, but as its cold, clammy coils washed over Ulrika she found that she could see within it. The world had a greyish tinge seen from inside the cloud, with the trees and men and horses dusted in silver, but all was clear. She could see the river and the track, and Stahleker’s men in one long rank above it on the slope, their lances resting on their stirrups – swift death, waiting in impenetrable darkness.
They didn’t have to wait long. Within ten minutes Ulrika heard the thud of heavy hooves and the jingle of harnesses in the distance. The lancers heard it a minute later, and shifted restlessly as they readied themselves.
‘Leave the warrior priest to me,’ said von Graal, pulling his visor down over his imperious face. ‘Kill the rest. None must escape.’
The scouts came first. Two men on horseback advanced down the track, peering and listening in every direction. Two more men moved through the woods on foot – foresters with bows and hunting horns and half-shuttered lanterns, but as they walked into the cloud of darkness, it was clear that they could not see within it like von Graal’s lancers could. They stopped and peered about and fumbled with their lanterns as if they thought the flames had gone out. They never saw the soldiers who clamped their hands over their mouths and daggered them through their hearts.
When their death throes had stopped, Stahleker’s men picked up their lanterns and walked out of the cloud, continuing to parallel the road so the mounted scouts would still see the lights bobbing along beside them. Ulrika smiled. It had been neatly done.
Soon the rumble of hooves got louder, and with it came the light of torches, striping the leafy ground with the thin black shadows of the young trees. Then Ulrika saw movement – a thicket of trotting horse legs, the heavy jounce of barded armour, the gleam of breastplates and mailed gloves, the flash of lance-tips and the rich colours of coats of arms on shields and banners.
A vanguard of ten knights rode at the front, two abreast, the first two with long-poled torches set in their lance-cups, the others with their helms on and their shields on their arms. The rest of the knights – perhaps forty in all – were more relaxed, and rode with their helms on their saddlebows and their shields on their backs, though they too remained alert. Ulrika didn’t like the look of them. This was a column just setting off. She could tell from experience that they had been on the road less than two hours, and were wide awake. It was much better to attack a column at the end of a march, when they were fatigued and bored and not paying attention.
In the centre of the warband, flanked by knights on either side, rode a man who could only be their lord – a barrel-chested old knight with a flowing white beard and his hair pulled back into two braids that slapped across his back plate with every pace. He talked cheerily to the rider next to him, a scarred, shaven-headed monolith of a man in the breastplate and vestments of a warrior priest.
The priest was a head taller than the lord, and rode a horse as huge and scarred as himself. He nodded distractedly as the lord babbled beside him, but his shadowed eyes never stopped searching the woods and the river and the road ahead, nor did his grip on his warhammer ever relax.
Ulrika eyed him uneasily. The rest were mere fodder. He was the danger. He radiated an almost visible aura of power. She glanced at von Graal. Did he really mean to give challenge to such a man? Better to take him out of the fight early. Otherwise things might get messy.
Behind the lord and the warrior priest came the crow-like figures of six witch hunters, hunched over their horses with their broad hats pulled low and their pistol butts glinting from their saddle holsters. After them rumbled three great cannon hauled by teams of heavy horses and followed by powder wagons. Next were the other supply wagons, neatly packed with food, tents, anvils, sundry supplies and the lances of the knights, and lastly, a small rearguard of watchful knights took up the rear.
Von Graal lowered his lance and raised his hand as the head of the column passed him by, and Stahleker’s men tucked their lances under their arms and gathered their reins in their left hands. The vampire watched until the warrior priest and the lord were directly in front of him, but still did not drop his hand. Instead, he whispered in an ancient tongue – harsh syllables, crude and vile.
Above him, the air boiled with shadows, and the shades and wraiths and banshees that floated there now gained form and solidity and swept down the slope towards the column like shrouds in the wind.
The warrior priest seemed to sense their approach, and opened his mouth to speak, but he was too late. Before he could cry warning, the billowing haunts burst from the tree line, shrieking with empty jaws and raking the knights with intangible claws. Others exhaled icy breaths that extinguished the torches, blanketing the track in darkness.
Instantly, the column was in chaos. Horses screamed and reared. Knights bellowed in fear and surprise and scrabbled for their weapons. The witch hunters fired futile shots at the diaphanous spirits. The vanguard turned and tried to push back through the column to aid the others. The warrior priest, however, had not been targeted by the haunts. He was not panicked. Nor was his horse.
Ulrika wanted to shout a warning to von Graal, but just then, he dropped his hand and plunged down the slope on his charger. Without word or cry, Stahleker’s lancers spurred after him, gathering speed as they slipped through the trees with inches to spare. Ulrika twitched like a wolfhound on a leash as she watched them go. Every fibre of her longed to be in on the charge, and she found she was strangling the pommel of her saddle in excitement.
Still silent, the lancers exploded from the trees and ploughed into the side of the column like a horseflesh avalanche, impaling the haunt-plagued knights and punching them out of their saddles before they knew they were being attacked. Knights and horses were driven sideways into the stream, slipping down the steep bank and floundering in the rushing water. Von Graal left his lance in the breast of one of the lord’s retainers and urged his charger towards the warrior priest as he drew his sword. Stahleker threw aside his shattered lance and shot the white-bearded lord point-blank in the face with a pistol as the old man tried to pull on his helm.
It was a massacre all along the line. The knights fought as if in darkest night, while Stahleker’s lancers, thanks to von Graal’s magics, could see everything, and took cruel advantage, toppling the knights from their saddles as they flailed in the wrong direction with their swords, stabbing them in the backs as they hacked at the spectres that shrieked in their ears. At the same time, pops of pistol fire flashed from the opposite bank, peppering the knights who had been driven into the river and knocking them into the water.
Then everything changed.
With a shout that seemed to come from a thousand throats, the warrior priest thrust up his shining hammer and a sphere of blazing light burst into existence over his head, illuminating the track and the churning river in a blinding gold-white radiance. At the touch of this light, the shades and wraiths shrivelled and dissipated like black steam, shrieks of agony echoing away after them, and von Graal shielded his face with his arm. Even up the slope, Ulrika cringed back from it. It stung like sunlight and seemed to stab at her soul like a molten sword.
All around the warrior priest, the knights recovered, fighting now unblinded, and finding their courage with the banishing of the dark. Now the attacks of Stahleker’s lancers were met steel to steel, and the pistoliers on the opposite shore held their fire as the two forces swirled together.
‘Stone me,’ said one of Ulrika’s guards, staring at the warrior priest. ‘That’s no company chaplain. That’s a bloody lector!’
Ulrika grunted with disgust. They were only seeing that now?
Von Graal recovered and pushed towards t
he priest, slashing with his sword. The priest blocked the strike with his glowing hammer, then thrust his palm at the vampire.
‘Creature of darkness!’ he roared. ‘Burn in the flames of Sigmar’s holy fire!’
A twin-tailed comet of fire leapt from his palm and struck von Graal in the chest. The vampire shouted a counter-spell, but the priest’s invocation was too strong. The flames enveloped him, setting his cloak and enamelled armour ablaze, and lighting his horse’s head on fire.
The horse reared, screaming, and von Graal, wreathed in flames, broke as well. Horse and rider bolted back into the woods as von Graal bellowed and beat at his burning cloak.
All along the line, the lancers were falling back, and some turned after von Graal, caught up in his panic.
‘Hold, you horse thieves!’ roared Stahleker as he spurred towards the warrior priest. ‘You break when I tell you to break!’
‘Keep your line!’ shouted Rachman. ‘Hold!’
The rallying cries pulled some of the men around, but the priest’s blazing light and the heavier weapons and armour of the knights were inexorably turning the tide. With the darkness and the shock of their sudden attack gone, the lancers were getting slaughtered.
Stahleker and Rachman hacked at the warrior priest, trying to cut him down, but no amount of experience and trickery could prevail against the sheer power of the lector and his hammer. Rachman was smashed from his horse, and Stahleker’s sabre was crumpled by a crushing blow. He wheeled his horse away, groping for his back sword, but the priest surged after him, knocking aside the lancers that came to his aid as if they weren’t there.
‘Come on,’ said Ulrika, edging forwards. ‘We have to help him.’
The guard on her left put his horse in front of her. ‘Sergeant said to stay here.’
‘Fool!’ snarled Ulrika. ‘We’ll be the only ones left!’
She shoved him and snatched the lance from his hands all in one movement, then danced her Arabyan into the other guard’s smaller horse. It stumbled aside and she spurred Yasim savagely as she couched her lance.
‘Hoy!’ shouted the guard. ‘Stop!’
‘Come catch me!’
Yasim plunged down the hill like red lightning, and Ulrika aimed her at the warrior priest’s back. He was driving Stahleker towards the river bank, bulling his little oblast charger back with the bulk of his warhorse, and raining heavy blows upon him with his hammer. The light from the blazing sphere above him burned Ulrika’s skin and filled her mind with buzzing bees. She clenched her teeth against the pain and clamped her lance tight against her side.
Again, the priest seemed to sense the approach of the unnatural, and wheeled to face her. Again, he was too late. The lance struck him under the left breast, and though it failed to pierce his shining armour, the strength of the impact punched him from the saddle and sent him crashing to the ground directly under the hooves of Stahleker’s horse.
Ulrika leapt from Yasim and dropped down on top of him, drawing her dagger and kneeling on his arm as he tried to raise his hammer.
‘Armour of Sigmar protect–’
Ulrika stabbed him through the eye with the blade and the invocation died on his lips before he could complete it. The sphere of light dimmed and vanished as his life left him, and all was blessed darkness again.
‘Much obliged,’ said Stahleker, blocking a knight who slashed at her as she stood. ‘And you didn’t kill my lads neither.’
Ulrika grinned and vaulted back into her saddle, drawing her rapier. ‘To Sergeant Stahleker!’ she shouted. ‘Drive ’em into the river!’
The lancers roared and rallied in the dark, and began to form a wall of whirling sabres as the knights fell back again towards the river bank. Rachman climbed back on his horse, his left arm hanging limp, and joined in the fight one-handed, guiding his horse with his knees.
Ulrika turned Yasim to help him, but before she could reach him, glass shattered on her pauldron and her face was splashed with stinging water.
‘Turn, fiend!’ shouted a voice as her skin blistered. ‘Turn and die!’
She hissed in pain and looked for the speaker, and got a brief glimpse of a witch hunter’s stern face before she was blinded by muzzle flash. A pistol ball punched through her breastplate to smash her ribs, and a pain like a branding iron quickly eclipsed the blunt throb of the impact. Silver. The screaming black agony of it almost overwhelmed her, and she felt the world swim around her, but stronger than the pain, stronger than the vertigo, was her rage. It rose up in her like a column of fire, blotting out sensation and fear and rational thought. These were the dogs that had burned Famke!
She dug her spurs into Yasim’s flanks and charged them, her vision reddening as if she was seeing through a mask of blood. Another pistol ball whizzed past her ear. She hardly noticed. A witch hunter slashed with a basket-hilt blade. She sheared it in two and cleaved his head from his shoulders with a back hand. Another reared up on her left, aiming a pistol. She chopped off his hand. Every move she made jarred the silver ball between her ribs and goaded her with fresh rage and agony.
More witch hunters came in, white-hot heart-fires in a red sea. She lashed at them in a blind frenzy, completely lost in her fury. The world fragmented into frozen moments – a witch hunter falling from his horse, his arm torn off at the shoulder, another clawing at the hilt of her rapier while the rest of the blade sprouted from the back of his neck, a third trampled under Yasim’s hooves as Ulrika slashed bloody stripes in his back.
Then there was only one – the leader – a hood-eyed gargoyle with a hawk nose that jutted from a curtain of lank grey hair. She knocked a globe of blessed water out of the air and pressed him back towards the river, beating back his sword cuts and scarring his armour with every swipe.
She grinned as his horse’s back hooves scrabbled at the slippery bank and his grim face began to show signs of fear.
‘I only wish I could burn you instead of drown you!’ she hissed.
His horse lost its footing at last and he had to clutch desperately to the saddle bow as its hindquarters dropped out from under him and it fought to climb back up the bank.
Ulrika laughed and raised her rapier for the final blow, but before she could strike, another horse shouldered in front of her and its rider slashed down at the witch hunter, decapitating him.
Ulrika snarled and shoved at the interloper, raising her blade, then saw that it was von Graal, his armour blackened and his helm gone, and riding a fresh horse. He had returned just in time to strike the last blow of the battle. Along the track the melee was over. The knights were dead and the lancers seeing to their wounded.
Von Graal smiled at her from a scarred, blistered, face. ‘Please, I beg you. Strike me so that I may be rid of you.’
Ulrika was sorely tempted, but the red rage was receding, and reason and pain returning, and she knew it was not the time. Not yet. She was too hurt. She could not be certain she would win. She lowered her rapier and inclined her head, nearly fainting with the agony of the wound made by the silver ball.
‘Forgive me, lord. I did not know who you were.’
‘What are you doing here at all?’ he asked. ‘Did I not order you to stay back?’
‘She saved the day, lord,’ said Rachman. ‘When you–’
Von Graal turned on him, eyes blazing with unnatural light. ‘When I what, corporal? Were you going to say that I have done something dishonourable?’
Rachman shifted uncomfortably, and Stahleker pushed up before him.
‘He wasn’t, lord. No. All he meant was, that in the face of that, anyone might have–’
‘Might have what, sergeant?’
Stahleker lowered his head like an angry bull. ‘Lord, I saw what I saw. You–’
‘What is your whore’s name, Stahleker?’ asked von Graal. ‘Margot, isn’t it? I find her quite attractive, in a coarse so
rt of way.’
‘Leave Mags out of this, lord. I–’
‘I slew the warrior priest,’ said von Graal. ‘I killed the witch hunters. Victory was mine this night, and if you or any of your men say different, your Margot will be moaning my name the next time you rut with her.’ He turned to Ulrika as Stahleker’s face went red. ‘As for you, stray, if you contradict my story, I will challenge you to single combat.’
Ulrika sneered. ‘Why not just kill me and have done?’
‘Because Kodrescu likes you, and I do not wish to anger him. But if you anger me, any of you, you will pay for it. Do I make myself clear?’
Ulrika glared at him, but was too weak to do more than nod. Stahleker and Rachman grunted.
‘Aye, lord. Very clear,’ they said.
‘Good,’ said von Graal, and turned his horse. ‘Then take the knights’ supplies and sink their cannon in the river, but leave the dead their armour and weapons. Lady Celia will raise them later. We ride when you are finished.’
‘Aye, lord,’ said Stahleker.
Ulrika remained upright in the saddle as von Graal rode towards his attendants, then she collapsed across Yasim’s neck, groaning in pain and slipping to the side.
Stahleker dismounted and caught her just before she fell. Rachman joined him.
‘Dirty coward,’ muttered Stahleker as he lowered her to the ground. ‘The victory may be his, but I know who I’d follow, no matter who was paying.’
‘Aye,’ said Rachman.
Ulrika looked up at them through the fog of semi-consciousness. Were they talking about her? They undid the straps of her breastplate, then pulled it off and Stahleker cut open her doublet with a dagger. The charred, bubbling wound beneath made both of them grimace.
‘That’s bad,’ said Stahleker. ‘I’ll fetch the barber.’
Ulrika shook her head and dug into the hole with her claws. The ball was wedged between two ribs. She plucked it out and flopped back, retching and dizzy. ‘No… surgeon. Just need blood.’
