The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  His thoughts were interrupted by a massive, rolling blast in the distance. He lifted his eyes in time to see the central tower, the emerald-encrusted pinnacle, slowly crumble. With a muffled roar, it toppled over, throwing a cloud of dust high into the air. With it gone, the citadel lost its residual terror. It was now nothing more than a collection of ruins, high in the wastes of the Middle Mountains. They had done what they came for. Kleister’s fortress had been razed.

  There was a movement at Magnus’s shoulder. Hildebrandt came and sat down by him. He watched the same spectacle grimly for a while.

  ‘What do you think will become of it?’ he said in his deep, rolling voice.

  Magnus shrugged, not really caring.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Maybe Ludenhof will have it rebuilt.’

  Hildebrandt turned away from the citadel, and looked at Magnus.

  ‘You were in the vaults,’ he said. ‘How did you get out of there? The whole place was on fire.’

  Magnus smiled weakly.

  ‘It helped having a dwarf at my side,’ he said. ‘As ever, he knew all the hidden ways.’

  Magnus sighed, and looked away from the wreck of Morgramgar.

  ‘He’s gone now,’ he said. ‘It turned out that this was more about him than any of us. He’s happy, at least.’

  Hildebrandt didn’t ask what that comment was about. For a moment, the two of them sat in silence. Two old friends, perched on a ramshackle cart on the edge of the civilised world. All around was wasteland, desolation and destruction.

  ‘So was it worth it, this commission?’ asked Hildebrandt, finally.

  Magnus didn’t reply immediately.

  ‘Not for the money we’ll get,’ he said at last. ‘And Messina’s dead. I regret that, despite everything. I should have worked harder with him. He had no idea of the danger he was in. And the Blutschreiben has gone forever. I now know what Rathmor did after leaving Nuln. We’ve stopped him spreading his madness further. That’s something, I suppose.’

  Hildebrandt nodded, but without much enthusiasm.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  Ahead of them, amongst the toiling ranks of men dismantling the camp ready for the journey home, Magnus suddenly caught sight of Lukas. The boy was laughing and joking with a band of halberdiers. In the sun, his flaxen hair looked bright and unsullied.

  ‘The lad,’ Magnus said. ‘He was with you at the end, yes?’

  Hildebrandt nodded.

  ‘Will he make it, do you think? Will he become an engineer?’

  Hildebrandt thought for a moment, before fixing Magnus with a level gaze.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But he’s seen what can be done with the machines. He saw what it did to Messina. If that’s the future, I’d wager he wants no part of it.’

  ‘You sound like I did,’ said Magnus. ‘Back in Hergig. You don’t regret what we’ve done, do you?’

  Hildebrandt looked back over the smoking ruins of Morgramgar, and his expression was bleak.

  ‘You persuaded me to come with you, Magnus,’ he said. ‘Truth be told, I came to protect you from yourself. Maybe this will be the saving of you. I hope it is. But there’s nothing for me here now. A man grows sick of the killing. When we’re back, that’s it for me. No more campaigns. You’d do well to do the same. Find an honest trade. Leave the fighting to younger men. Our time has passed.’

  Magnus said nothing, but followed his friend’s gaze out towards the broken fortress. The smoke still poured out.

  ‘The Empire will always need Iron Companies,’ he said, though his heart was not quite in it.

  ‘So you say,’ said Hildebrandt, and neither was his.

  In the distance, a series of trumpets were blown to mark the lifting of the camp. Horses were whipped into action, and the loaded wagons and carts began to move. Men shouldered their weapons and pulled their packs onto their backs. In the midst of them were the handgunners. Their numbers were sorely reduced. There were few cannons left too. Hochland’s arsenal would take months to recover its strength. The entire state had been weakened, its strength sapped by the feuds between powerful men. Even as its armies were drained of their potency, the foes of mankind multiplied in the wastelands beyond. The whole affair had been dirty, vicious, demoralising and dangerous. If this was victory, it was a sour taste to savour.

  Hildebrandt said nothing more. After a few moments, he got down from his seat and walked over to the remnants of the artillery train. His voice was soon raised in the distance, shouting orders to the men, getting the caravan into order.

  Magnus watched him for a moment, before turning his gaze one final time back to Morgramgar. The thought that Rathmor, the architect of the disaster which killed his father, lay buried under the mountain was some consolation for all that had happened. And despite everything, there was a flicker of pride deep within his breast.

  He reached down for his gourd. For the last few days, he had barely thought of having a drink. Now, with all the excitement over, he surely deserved a swig. As he drew the leather to his lips, he paused. For some reason, the smell of the ale repelled him. Perhaps it had finally turned. Of perhaps finally he had.

  He let the gourd fall down at his feet. The beer ran from the neck, foaming brown. It seeped into the rock. There suddenly seemed so little point to it. He had drowned in drink to forget the past. Now the past had returned, and its horrors had been more fragile than he’d remembered.

  Magnus took a deep breath, feeling the pure, cold air enter his battered frame. The craving had left him. Perhaps not forever, but for the moment. And as he had once said to Thorgad, a start was all he needed. For the first time he could remember since the accident at Nuln, Magnus reflected on the legacy of Augustus and felt no shame. He was complete. He was healed. All men had ghosts, but his were no longer vengeful. As the high clouds drifted past the ruined towers, he thought he caught the phantasm of his father’s face one last time. The craggy features, the mane of hair. But no disapproval. Not any more.

  Magnus sighed, and the daydream rippled out of existence. The wind was getting up again. He could feel his wounded side ache from the chill. He had to go. There would be plenty of time to decide whether he wanted to take on another assignment when he got back to Hergig. Perhaps Hildebrandt was right. Perhaps he should look to retire. And yet a part of him wondered if he would ever do it. The Empire would always need engineers. There would always be madmen like Rathmor to counter, always walls that needed to be breached. For all their dangers and temptations, the new sciences were still the future for mankind. For better or worse Magnus had always been a part of that. Maybe he always would be.

  He turned his back on the smoking ruins, and headed back down towards the baggage trains. As he went, the cold air moaned across the stone of the valley. He passed the ruined iron of the cannons and joined the mass of men marching back the way they had come. For a moment his long leather coat was visible. Then Magnus vanished among them, just another face in the numberless armies of the Empire.

  The campaign was over. They were going home.

  Prologue

  Iron Gate, dwarf-held bastion of Black Fire Pass,

  690 miles from Altdorf

  They came from the east. The green tide that swept across the Worlds Edge Mountains went through its southern causeways with the pounding of drums and the call of beasts. They burned and sacked as they went. The sky blackened with the smoke of their charnel fires. Horns and bestial roars announced them. Tribes upon tribes heard the call to arms: the Waaagh! One by one the orcs and goblins emerged from their caves, bringing cleavers and spears and a brute desire to kill. This was the greenskin way, and with each fresh warband the horde swelled and its belligerence grew.

  Black Fire Pass – the name was legendary. Orcs had come here before, and would again. Over two thousand years ago, they fought the nascent Man-God and were defeated. No
w, a goblin led them. An apparent lesser cousin of the orc was the goblin, but not this beast. This beast was different. It was driven. It was ruthless. It was deadly. And neither dwarf nor man who guarded the gates of this ancestral battleground would oppose it.

  ‘Name the dead!’ King Bragarik boomed above the battle. He could barely think, such was the thunder coming from the orc drums. His skull throbbed with it, and their debased chanting.

  ‘Thord Helhand, slain by an urk’s blade; Norgan Stonefinger, crushed under a grobi chariot; Baldin Grittooth, bard of the halls, eaten by a troll…’ The dwarf king’s grudgemaster reeled off the names of the fallen as if he were inventorying weapons from the hold’s armouries.

  There was no time for remorse, or for grief. Dwarfs were pragmatic, especially about death. Retribution was all that mattered, and a levelling of the scales made in blood.

  Life was balance. A death for a death. Blood for blood. The grudgekeeper’s way.

  Grudgemaster Drengk scribed perfunctorily, in the same manner as his declarations. There might be no time later. If he died, who then would remember the fallen? Who then would scribe his name in the book? The ‘book’ was a massive, hide-bound tome which hung around his neck as heavy as a millstone. But dwarfs were stout and strong: they worked and lived underground, digging, mining, hauling rock and ore. Drengk wore his discomfort, as all dwarfs did, with a stoic scowl.

  In front of king and grudgemaster were Iron Gate’s hearthguard, its hammerers. These redoubtable warriors were the king’s own and they stood in file with shields locked. Hammers rose and fell like pistons and oaths were hurled like spears into the greenskin hordes trying to punch through them. King Bragarik was at their centre, his grudgemaster just behind him.

  The hammerers’ gromril armour was dented and stained from hard fighting. Each suit was an heirloom, worth as much as a human town. More than one hammerer had lost his battle helm. Dark, hateful eyes were revealed underneath, where before they’d been occluded by a mass of beard and metal. The elite of the dwarf hold brought low by cleavers and clubs.

  King Bragarik hadn’t escaped without injury. His mail gorget was split and the links spilled down his armoured chest. A cut just above his brow drooled blood, gumming his left eye and making it dark and rheumy. Bragarik had discarded his own shield. A troll’s mace had shattered it. The beast was destroyed – the dwarf king had burned it with his rune axe – but so too was his shield.

  Even Loki and Kazûm, his bearers, laboured underneath him with injuries. A long hard fight. One the dwarfs were losing.

  For a moment, the line bowed as a renewed thrust came from the rear of the orcs and rippled forward to the fighting ranks. A hammerer screamed and fell with a black haft protruding from his neck, only to be lost from view in a red haze.

  ‘Close ranks,’ bellowed the king. A blaring warhorn answered above the rumble of drums. Blood laced his gilded gromril armour, painting its runes black as he severed an orc’s neck. He crushed the skull of another with his gauntleted fist. Below him, his shieldbearers hacked furiously with their axes.

  When the killing abated for a moment and the line was strong once more, King Bragarik scowled back at Drengk.

  ‘Godrin Stoutbellow,’ the grudgemaster concluded, ‘killed by an urk spear.’

  ‘Let it be known,’ proclaimed the king, ‘that on this day they did fall and were revenged.’ His eye traced the line of battle, too long and too thin for his liking, strung out across the width of Black Fire Pass, its valley sides teeming with greenskins. Bragarik saw his hammerers, a cliff of gromril breakers against a green and turbulent tide. To their right were the Venerable, silver-haired long-beards that had lived for centuries but whose place by the eternal hearth was calling. Most were older than the king, and twice as cantankerous. Every one of their dead was not only the loss of a dwarf, but an end to a piece of living history. The warrior clans followed them: metalsmiths, fletchers, candlemakers and rockshapers all – the craftsdwarfs of the hold arrayed in battle and fighting alongside their brothers.

  Quarrellers regimented upon a shallow mound filled the air with shafts from their crossbows, exacting a heavy toll. Thunderers boomed just below, between their volleys, spewing smoke and fire. More greenskins fell to their fusillades too, but it wasn’t enough; not nearly enough.

  Rodi Coalthumb’s miners were overrun. Bragarik saw the thane laying his oathstone as he prepared a final stand.

  Drongi’s rangers had long been lost to the greenskin swell, swept up like sticks before a rushing river.

  The king’s own son, Orig, lay on a bier of shields in a cold room, silently reposed. It had been a bitter blow.

  Yes, only retribution was left to the dwarfs now as Black Fire Pass filled with orcs and goblins, just as it had done in recent years when man and dwarf first stood together.

  ‘Is there sign of–’

  A blast of cannons behind him smothered even Bragarik’s imposing voice.

  ‘Their chieftain,’ he tried again. ‘Is there sign of him?’

  Skane, the hold’s banner bearer, was standing on top of a small hillock and gazed across the field beyond the rolling gun smoke.

  ‘I see him, thane-king.’ He pointed to the east, his grubby finger encrusted with rings.

  Bragarik’s eyes narrowed when he saw the Paunch.

  The bloated goblin king spewed curses with every breath as he hacked and hewed with a double-bladed axe.

  Bragarik hawked and spat, before despatching another orc with his rune axe. He’d dearly love to vent his wrath on the fat goblin swine.

  A shadow crept across a lightning cracked sky. Fell voices churned the air, deep and animalistic – the Paunch’s shaman was abroad.

  The voice of Hungni, runesmith of the hold, rose up to challenge it. Orcish sorcery met dwarf tenacity and the heavens burned with green fire.

  Emboldened by their shaman’s magic, the greenskins pushed and the dwarfs gave. Just one step, but Bragarik felt it all the way down the line as his shieldbearers retreated.

  ‘At this rate, the walls of Iron Gate will be at our backs,’ snapped the king, to no one in particular.

  And then there would be no more ground to give.

  He turned again to Skane.

  ‘To the north, does he come?’

  The hammerer line rippled with another greenskin assault, bringing shouts, death cries and more naming of the dead from Drengk.

  Rodi Coalthumb was gone. Laments from slayers weighted the air, doleful and fatalistic.

  Skane shielded his eyes against a pellucid light above that was far from natural. Hungni was losing to the shaman. The beat of a wyvern’s wings was drawing nearer…

  Unmoving as a rock, Skane did not waver. He looked northward. A speck was growing there, like a piece of grit at first. It became larger as a grim wind began to build. The edges of Skane’s cloth banner shivered.

  The dwarf line withdrew another step.

  ‘Skane!’

  The banner bearer let his hand fall. ‘He comes, my king! He comes!’

  Cresting the mountain crags around Iron Gate, a figure ran slowly but steadily towards the king. The dwarf’s cheeks were puffed, his armour split. A cudgel blow dented his helm.

  Six messengers the king had sent and only one returned. He had a scroll tucked in his belt. Bragarik’s eyes were keen and he saw a wax seal upon it, wearing the Imperial crest of Emperor Dieter IV.

  ‘Let him through!’ he bellowed. More horns conveyed the order, and the dwarf rearguards parted like a metal sea to admit the messenger.

  As the dwarf approached, he was still catching his breath. Bragarik’s attention was half elsewhere, looking askance at the eastern flank crumbling as a force of orc boar riders rolled over it.

  Drengk’s voice was hoarse by now. It vied with the heavy report of drums and the shouts of thanes as they fought to shore up
the broken flank.

  Heavily-armoured Ironbreakers were already moving in to intercede against the boar’s riders and they planted their banner firmly.

  ‘Speak quickly,’ snapped the king.

  The messenger proffered the scroll to him.

  Leaning down to snatch it from the messenger’s grip, Bragarik split the seal, unfurled it and read swiftly. Hope faded as vitriol clouded the king’s granite features. He crushed the scroll in his fist and let it fall.

  The king looked at Skane. ‘Signal the retreat.’

  ‘Thane-king?’

  Bragarik’s beard quivered with rage, setting the torcs and ingots bound there jangling.

  ‘Do as you’re bidden!’

  He turned back towards the line and looked over the wall of hammerer shields defending him.

  ‘The day is lost…’ he growled to himself, and then in a smaller, hate-filled voice. ‘Old oaths are sundered.’

  Skane raised the hold banner and gave the signal to retreat. All across the killing field, horns sounded and drums crashed. The line narrowed, its long haft becoming a hammer’s head as the stoutest dwarf armour put itself between its retreating brothers and the greenskins. They withdrew by steps, slow and reluctant. King Bragarik was amongst the last to leave.

  Bodies of dead dwarfs were revealed in their wake amidst a mire of broken blades and shattered hafts. Snapped shields stuck out of red-rimed earth like partly excised teeth. Fallen battle helms served as paltry grave-markers. Greenskins littered the field, too, together with the carcasses of slain beasts. Already, they had begun to stink and a pall of decay hung over the air.

  Bragarik’s nose rankled as he surveyed the dead.

  Drengk had lost his voice and scribed silently in his tome of remembering, the hold’s book of grudges, its dammaz kron, where all the ills done to its many clans were recorded.

  Bragarik wagered that several dark chapters would be writ by the grudgemaster’s hand before the day was out.