Where there is lowliness, give us majesty,
Where there is death, give us eternity.
Then he moved along the ranks of men and placed his hand on each of their swords in turn, muttering a blessing as he went:
Fill this heart with faith undying,
Gilt this sword, with strength unceasing.
Once he’d reached the final knight, Wolff climbed up onto his own horse and positioned himself at the front of the squadron, next to Maximilian. There was a look of bleak despondency on his face.
The old knight gave Wolff a concerned glance. ‘This isn’t the first time we’ve faced such a foe,’ he said, nodding to the row of flickering lights that had begun to appear on the horizon.
Wolff shook his head, but did not look up from where his hands were resting on the pommel of his saddle. ‘It’s not what’s out there that worries me, Maximilian,’ he muttered.
Maximilian lowered his voice and leant closer to his old friend. ‘I have faith in you, Jakob, even if you do not. Whoever and whatever you face tonight, I know you will emerge victorious.’
Wolff lifted his eyes, and Ratboy saw agony and doubt burning there. The priest opened his mouth to answer Maximilian, but the words were lost, as Hagen’s Claw exploded into an inferno of sound and flame.
All along the hillside, rows of cannon and mortar boomed into life. Ratboy flinched and gripped his horse’s reins in terror, taken by surprise as the guns unleashed hell on the vague shapes massing below. With the sound of the guns still ringing in his ears, he looked around and saw to his shame that Wolff, Maximilian and Anna were all sat quite calmly, peering through the growing darkness to see the effect of the volley.
‘The range of these things is amazing,’ said Maximilian as some of the lights below them flickered and died.
The enemy was still far from the foot of the hill and it was hard to see anything very clearly, but the droning horn faltered for a few seconds and several of Fabian’s regiments burst into spontaneous cheers.
‘It’s a little early to begin victory celebrations,’ said Anna, giving Ratboy a wry grin. ‘I’m going to move back up the hill, there’s nothing I can do in the thick of the fighting. I’ll see if I can find the surgeons and wait for the wounded to arrive.’ She placed a hand on Ratboy’s arm and opened her mouth to say something. Then she changed her mind and simply nodded at him.
He gave her a mute nod in reply and watched her ride away between the ranks of stern-faced soldiers. As she disappeared from view, he felt an almost overwhelming urge to rush after her, but a look at his master’s troubled face give him new resolve and he drew his sword instead.
‘Here they come,’ said Maximilian, snapping his visor down.
Ratboy saw that the tides of light below were now rushing towards the hill at great speed. The drone of the horn shifted up a key, becoming a shrill scream and he began to make out individual figures at the head of Mormius’s army. He frowned. There was something odd about the men sprinting towards them. They were clad in crude, brutal armour, tatty shreds of hide and helmets crowned with vicious tusks, but it was not their dress that made him frown. There was something about their proportions that confused him. He turned to Wolff with a question on his lips, but his master was engrossed in his own thoughts and barely seemed to register the army hurtling towards them.
As the men moved closer, other marauders emerged behind them and it was then that Ratboy realised what was so strange about the warriors in the vanguard: they were colossal. The marauders behind them were obviously well built, but they barely reached the waists of the warriors in the front line. As the giants pounded across the field towards them, Ratboy noticed that their faces were as grey as month-old corpses and their canines were grotesquely enlarged – jutting from their drooling mouths like boar tusks. ‘What are they?’ he gasped.
‘Ogres of some kind,’ replied Maximilian, his voice ringing oddly through his helmet. ‘They’re a fearsome breed, from what I’ve heard. Fond of human flesh.’ He raised his sword in silent command and there was a scraping of steel behind him as the ranks of knights all drew their own weapons in perfect unison.
Maximilian gestured to Ratboy’s sword. ‘That should serve you well, son.’
Ratboy nodded and lifted the ornate weapon higher, but as he saw the haunted expression on Wolff’s face, doubt filled him. Just then another, even louder explosion of artillery erupted behind them and Ratboy’s horse flinched violently, almost throwing him from the saddle.
‘Steady,’ said Maximilian, as the first rows of marauders started to dash up the hill towards them, led by the huge, lumbering ogres. As the creatures grew closer, Ratboy realised he could hear their hoarse, grunting breath beneath the wailing of the horn. He looked at Maximilian, wondering what he was waiting for. In a few more minutes the monsters would be all over them. The baron was faceless behind the polished steel of his helmet and did not acknowledge him.
Just as Ratboy was about to speak, a dark shape passed overhead. The archers at the top of the hill had finally loosed their arrows and the dusk grew even deeper as the lethal cloud filled the sky. The marauders were so close by this point that even the fading light could not obscure their outlines. Thousands of black and white-flecked arrows thudded into their thick hides.
Countless ranks of marauders fell screaming back down the hill, clutching at their throats and chests as they went, but the ogres barely stumbled. They hardly seemed to notice the arrows that sank into them. With a chorus of derisive grunts and snarls they simply snapped the shafts and continued rushing up the hill.
‘They’re unstoppable,’ muttered Ratboy, looking around to see if the other soldiers would hold their ground in the face of such a horrendous foe.
‘Watch,’ said the baron, gently turning Ratboy’s face back towards the front line.
The grunting, stomping mass of corruption was only a few feet from the vanguard of Fabian’s army when, at the bark of a captain, the soldiers in the frontline raised an impressive array of pistols, muskets and crossbows. The men did not fire however, watching for the captain’s signal as the ogres lurched towards them. Soon, they were so close that Ratboy could smell the thick, meaty stink of their flesh.
At the very last minute, the captain stepped out to meet them. It was one of the wolf-helmed Oberhau, and as the first ogre approached him, the captain calmly fired his flintlock pistol into the monster’s head, tearing the skin from its skull with a fierce blast of gunpowder. As the report of the pistol echoed across the hillside the creature finally paused. It raised its hands to the pulpy mess where its face had been and gave a grunt of confusion. Then it toppled lifelessly back down the hill.
The captain dropped to one knee, lowered his head and pointed his sword at the enemy. At this silent signal, the entire frontline fired their weapons. The noise of so many guns blasting in concert was incredible and the hillside lit up in a brief, sulphurous flash. It was so bright that for a second the ogres’ faces resembled those of grotesque actors, leering out into the footlights of an infernal theatre. Then the lead shot ripped the flesh from their bones and left gaping, blackened holes in their chests. Even in death, though, many of them seemed incapable of halting; stumbling forwards even as viscera spilled through their hands and their legs collapsed beneath them.
As a second thunderous volley tore into them, most of the ogres finally ground to a bloody halt: only one actually managed to blunder, half-blind, into Fabian’s army. It was even larger than the others and its misshapen head was crowned with a thick, white mohican. The left side of its face was hanging down around its neck like a glistening scarf, revealing its long teeth in a fierce rictus grin as it stumbled, bellowing, up the hill. Black and white ranks of soldiers crowded around the towering figure, trying to block its way, but the thing’s rage and momentum powered it through them. Its only weapon was a rough-hewn piece of sharpened iron, but the crude bla
de was taller than any of the men who pressed around the ogre and the monster cut them down as easily as grass, pausing only to tear at their faces with its gleaming, exposed teeth.
The ogre wove a spiralling, confused path through the soldiers and Ratboy realised with a rush of dismay that it was heading towards the Knights Griffon. Dozens of blades rose and fell against it, but to no avail. Then, with a crash like waves against rocks the full force of the marauder army ploughed into the Ostlanders. The battle began in earnest and the ogre was forgotten.
A cacophony of screamed commands engulfed Ratboy as the surrounding regiments began charging down the hill, howling with fear and bloodlust as they rushed towards the enemy. Meanwhile, clouds of arrows were still swarming overhead and the phut phut of mortar fire had begun, sending whistling, iron balls down into the approaching hordes, where they exploded into fragments of white-hot metal.
Ratboy looked at Maximilian and saw to his surprise that he was still sat utterly still. Watching with calm disdain as Hagen’s Claw descended into a riot of fear and pandemonium. Behind the baron, his knights waited, equally patient and at the baron’s side, Wolff seemed unaware of the fighting. His huge, armour-clad shape remained motionless, as he studied his hands with a perplexed frown on his face.
The injured ogre was now only a few feet away, hammering its brutal weapon through ranks of men, utterly oblivious to the countless wounds that networked its calloused flesh. With a roar of frustration the thing slammed its huge shard of metal into a row of spearmen attempting to block its way, sending them reeling backwards in a shower of splintered wood and bone. The men screamed in horror and pain as the ogre trampled maniacally over their bodies, crushing ribs, lungs and hearts as it continued up the hill. Then, with a confused snort, the beast found itself facing a dazzling sight: Maximilian and his knights.
Wolff finally looked up from the back of his hands to see a bleeding colossus staring directly at him. The ogre seemed enraged by the priest’s air of devotion. Ignoring the knights it made straight for Wolff, raising the huge piece of metal above its head with a belching roar.
Wolff and the surrounding knights scattered their horses just in time as the hunk of iron sliced deep into the soft turf. Anger flashed in Wolff’s eyes and as his horse circled the beast, he drew the warhammer from his back, testing its weight as though he’d never held the weapon before.
Ratboy saw the muscles tighten in his master’s powerful jaw and wondered if the priest’s anger was at the sight of the monster or at the thought of his own inaction.
‘Sigmar,’ bellowed Wolff, with such fury that everyone within earshot paused and looked in his direction. Even the ogre hesitated, lowering its guard for a second and turning to face the priest with a slack-jawed grunt. ‘Absolves you,’ continued Wolff, slamming his hammer into the thing’s knee. The crack of breaking bone rang out, audible even above the gunshots further down the hill.
The ogre’s leg folded backwards, sending it crashing to the ground and the last traces of doubt vanished from Wolff’s eyes. Dismounting, he grasped the hammer in both hands, strode towards the dazed creature and slammed the weapon into its face. As he did so, the rekindled flames of his devotion rushed from his flesh and into the metal, so that as it connected with the monster’s jaw, the head of the hammer was throbbing with white, holy radiance.
The ogre’s skull detonated in an explosion of blood and light and it sprawled backwards across the scorched grass.
Wolff looked around at the soldiers charging down the hill with surprise on his face. Then he clambered back onto his horse and turned to face Maximilian, Ratboy and the knights. His ornate, iron cuirass was drenched in the ogre’s blood and his face was flushed with exertion but, as he wiped the gore from his shaven head, he smiled at his friends. ‘We’ve work to do,’ he said, nodding at the carnage below.
The initial wave of ogres had been replaced by a crush of human marauders so great that the Ostlanders were already being forced to concede ground. A chorus of grunts and screams had replaced the sound of gunfire as the two armies locked together in a heaving, flailing forest of limbs and spears.
Maximilian nodded in reply and signalled for his standard bearer to raise their colours. As the cloth unfurled in the breeze, the baron snapped his reins and began riding down the hill at a slow trot. Behind him, the ranks of knights followed suit, maintaining their neat, orderly lines as they made their way through the battle.
As they neared the bottom of the hill, Ratboy realised that despite the size of Fabian’s army, the tide had already turned against them. Marauders were flooding out of the darkness like a plague. The horizon had vanished behind a sea of pale, muscled flesh and scaled, mutated limbs. Ratboy saw horsemen, with long, drooping moustaches and others with helmets fashioned from the skulls of great beasts. Behind them marched blue-eyed tribesmen wearing human pelts and bearded, screaming goliaths with chains woven through their tattooed flesh. Despite their initial display of firepower, the sheer volume of the enemy was now overwhelming the Ostlanders. Guns were useless in close combat and the bare-chested marauders hacked and clawed their way through them in an orgy of bloodletting.
Ratboy swallowed hard as he neared the frontline. The din of clanging swords and screaming wounded was horrendous and as the last traces of sun vanished the slaughter became a strange, gruesome, tableau. The rows of grim faces looked suddenly flat and unreal as silver moonlight threw them into sharp relief.
The crush of bodies was so great that before Ratboy and the others could reach the marauders, their horses ground to a halt, hemmed in by clanking, serried ranks of Empire soldiers, several feet away from the fighting. The heaving mass of shields and spears was rocked by tides of movement, lurching and stumbling from left to right and Ratboy’s horse strained beneath him, struggling to keep its balance in the tumult. Despite his fear of the marauders, Ratboy found it worse to be stranded like this, so close, but unable to act.
‘What do we do now?’ he called to Wolff. The priest was right next to him, but he had to yell to be heard over the clamour.
Wolff was looking back up the hill at the banners that surrounded the command group. There was no sign that Fabian and his officers were going to join the fighting. At the sound of his acolyte’s voice, Wolff turned to face him with a frown of confusion. ‘What?’ he yelled back, leaning forward and cupping his ear.
‘What do we do?’ repeated Ratboy, raising his voice to a hoarse yell.
Wolff pointed his hammer at the advancing ranks of marauders. Their numbers were quickly overwhelming the Empire soldiers. ‘Wait,’ he replied, making the sign of the hammer over his chest. ‘And pray.’
They did not have to wait long.
Far down in the valley, there was a flash of silver, as a winged figure lifted up over the heads of the marauders. From this distance it was barely more than a glittering speck, but Ratboy thought he could make out multiple pairs of wings, shimmering in the moonlight as it flew towards them. ‘It’s Mormius,’ he gasped, leaning forward in his saddle to try and see more clearly. The din of battle drowned out his words, but he assumed he was right. As Mormius approached, Ratboy saw him raise a long, tapered horn to his lips and the awful, undulating sound echoed around Hagen’s Claw again.
At the sound of Mormius’s horn, his army surged forward with renewed vigour. They seemed utterly consumed by passion, howling furiously and throwing themselves against the Ostlanders with complete abandon.
The captain of the Oberhau tried to rally his men, swinging his greatsword with such phenomenal speed that a circle of headless corpses quickly built up around him. As the marauders pushed the other Empire troops slowly back up the hill, the captain found himself alone in an island of calm at the heart of the enemy vanguard. As the rows of muscled, mutated barbarians crowded around him the captain’s strikes grew so fast his movements were hard to follow. Only the wolf mask of his helmet was visible, seeming to sna
rl with delight at the constant supply of fresh blood. Finally, inevitably, the circle closed in on him as the marauders used the sheer mass of their bodies to stifle his blows. Ratboy saw the lupine snout of his helmet one last time before it vanished under a tsunami of swords, axes and spears.
As Mormius’s horn pealed out across the battlefield, driving his men onwards, Ratboy’s concerns about reaching the frontline evaporated. The Ostlanders were now falling in droves and the fight was moving towards him with alarming speed. A nearby group of halberdiers dropped their weapons in panic and tried to scramble back up the hill, but they were blocked by the dignified, immovable presence of the Knights Griffon. The marauders made short work of the stranded men: hacking at their backs with broad, iron axes and ripping out their throats with crab-like claws.
As the last of the halberdiers fell to the ground, Maximilian’s knights finally had room to manoeuvre and he waved them on with a twirl of his sword. As their chargers leapt forwards, Ratboy’s horse followed suit and he found himself flying towards the screaming, blood-drenched marauders, with Wolff’s broad, armoured back just ahead of him.
The knights fought with vicious, carefully drilled efficiency. Their swords rose and fell in graceful arcs, quickly cutting a path through the enemy and leaving a trail of broken claws and splintered shields. Wolff seemed to forget his brother for a moment and let the heat of battle consume him, swinging his hammer with brutal effectiveness and screaming out blessings as he pummelled and crunched his way through the marauders.
Ratboy tried to imitate the knights’ unruffled precision, but as the sneering marauders crowded around him, his horse reared in panic and Ratboy lashed out in a desperate frenzy. The strange sword felt light and swift in his hands and his frantic blows were surprisingly effective. Few marauders made it past Wolff’s pounding hammer, but those that did met a blur of flashing steel.
Across the hillside, other knightly orders were entering the fray and for a while the enemy’s advance slowed. The winged figure of Mormius was still gliding towards Hagen’s Claw and as he approached, his horn rang out once more. The wavering note was now so loud that several of the Ostlanders had to clamp their hands over their ears to block out the trilling sound. The marauders exploded into action – driven onwards by the close proximity of their general’s rallying cry. Even Maximilian’s knights struggled to defend themselves against such unhinged aggression. The bare-chested barbarians threw themselves at the polished armour of the knights with no thought for their own safety. For every one that fell, gutted, to the bloody ground, a dozen others clambered up onto the horses, their eyes rolling wildly as they wrenched and hacked at the men’s armour.
The Empire Omnibus Page 88
