01 - Empire in Chaos (15 page)

Grunwald heard Karl trying to organise his knights, barking commands and
orders. He saw a hurled spear slam into the side of Thorrik’s helmet, and his
head jerked, but the blow could not even scratch his gromril armour, nor did it
knock him back a single step. He merely turned, cursing in his own language, and
cut down another leaping wolf, his blade smashing it to the ground.

The witch hunter snarled as a jagged blade cut across his forearm, and he
spun, smashing his attacker from the back of a wolf. The goblin hissed at him as
he leapt at it, its scrawny limbs kicking out at him. Grunwald slammed a boot
into the creature’s head, hearing a satisfying crack as its neck broke.

He saw Karl then, battling like a hero of old, his sword cutting down goblins
and his horse shattering skulls with its flailing hooves. A diminutive greenskin
leapt from the back of its own mount onto the saddle behind Karl, spider-like
fingers scrabbling at the knight’s helmet, a serrated dagger held in its other
hand. His warhorse reared; both the knight and the goblin fell to the ground,
and Grunwald lost sight of the preceptor.

He hefted his mace and took a step back to get a better footing as a pair of
wolf riders leapt towards him, tongues lolling from the maws of the massive
grey-furred mounts. One of the goblins tumbled forward off its steed, and the
wolf of the second rider yelped in pain and collapsed to the ground, its back
legs giving way beneath it. The witch hunter saw a metal crossbow bolt
protruding from the hindquarters of the wolf, and the air was suddenly filled
with a second flight of bolts fired from the tree line.

The wolf that had lost its rider leapt at him, huge paws slamming into his
chest, jaws widening as it sought his throat. He was knocked backwards onto the
ground, and he felt the rancid, hot breath of the foul creature on his face.
Desperately he held its jaws at bay with a gloved hand clamped around the
beast’s throat, but the strength and weight of it was immense.

His sight was obscured as hot blood sprayed into his eyes, and he felt the
monstrous creature go limp, collapsing on top of him. With a surge of
adrenaline-fuelled strength he pushed the dead weight from him, and rose
unsteadily to his feet, wiping the thick gruel of viscous gore from his eyes.

A short, stocky figure turned away from him, hefting a double-headed axe.

A throaty war cry sounded all around him, Grunwald saw a host of the stocky
figures trudging forward, hefting axes. Grunwald grunted with exertion as he
clubbed his mace into the head of a goblin half-crushed beneath its dead mount,
smashing it like a piece of fruit, and watched as the dwarfs descended on the
goblins, vitriolic hatred guiding their blows. Their axes carved a bloody swathe
through the greenskins, and the last of the wolf riders were soon fleeing into
the darkness, the sound of their howls growing ever more distant.

Grunwald wiped the blood and brain matter from the ridges of his mace as
Thorrik greeted his kinsmen dourly, speaking in their own rumbling, guttural
tongue. He looked around and caught sight of Karl, swearing profusely as he
brushed the mud from his armour.

“How many?” he asked the preceptor as he drew alongside him. The knight
looked up, his eyes angry.

“Too many. Six knights, and four horses. One more horse will have to be
destroyed.” Even as he said the words, the pained screams of a horse were
silenced, “Damn it, things must be bad if there are goblins raiding the entrance
to the pass.”

“Aye,” said Grunwald.

“You alright? Got yourself cut?” asked Karl, seeing the blood dripping from
the witch hunter’s arm. Grunwald glanced down at the wound.

“Nothing much. Should have seen it coming,” he said dismissively.

“I’m glad
they
turned up,” muttered Karl, nodding his head towards the
dwarfs. The leader of the dwarfs was conversing with Thorrik while the rest of
their number got to work piling up the dead goblins and wolves. It looked like
there were over two dozen of the wretched corpses all told.

They were not as heavily armoured as Thorrik, he noted. Each of them wore a
heavy coat of mail and a thick furred cloak, and carried axes and sturdy
crossbows. They moved about their work with diligence and within minutes they
had a large blaze going, and the air was filled with the stench of burning
flesh.

The witch hunter and preceptor walked to Thorrik’s side, and the dwarf he was
talking to turned his stony gaze towards them. He looked older than Thorrik,
though it was hard to gauge his age, and his grey-streaked beard would have
touched the ground if it had not been tied up and folded back on itself in a
series of intricate braids. He had a pipe in his mouth, and blue smoke puffed
from his nostrils.

“I thank you for your timely arrival, sir dwarf,” said the knight. “I am Karl
Heiden, preceptor of Myrmidia, and this is Udo Grunwald, templar of Sigmar. Had
you not arrived when you did, I fear that my losses would have been considerably
higher.”

The dwarf grunted in reply, and said something in his native language,
pipe-smoke billowing around him.

“It seems that you spoke the truth,” said Thorrik gruffly, addressing Karl,
his face dark. “The hated greenskins are massing in numbers not seen since the
time of King Kurgan himself. They smash against the walls of Kolaz Umgol and the
Grimbeard Station like a living tide, and it is said that even Karaz-a-Karak is
threatened. This is a grim day indeed.”

“But these outriders slipped past the defences of the pass,” said Grunwald,
concerned. “Others may have done so as well. The temple of Sigmar may itself be
under attack.”

“Aye, it may be so, manling,” said the leader of the dwarf rangers, still
puffing at his pipe. His voice sounded like boulders grinding together, stony
and hard. “These stinking grobi,” he said, removing his pipe to spit on the
ground at the mention of the greenskins, “are not the only of their kind moving
out there this night. I can smell their stink on the air.”

Grunwald felt his anger grow. He turned towards Karl, rage and concern in his
eyes.

“I must get to the temple. It must not be defiled by the likes of these foul
creatures,” he said indicating towards the burning pile of goblins. Karl nodded
his head.

“The Knights of the Blazing Sun will ride with you,” said the preceptor, his
face unusually serious.

“Manling,” said Thorrik, and the witch hunter turned towards the dour,
dependable warrior.

“I cannot accompany you this time,” said the dwarf. “My oath binds me. Here
our ways part.” The pair shook arms, hands locked around the other’s forearm in
the dwarfen manner. Then, with no more than a gruff nod in farewell, the dwarf
turned and began marching to the east with his kinsmen. Silently, Grunwald
wished the dwarf well.

“Come,” said Karl. “I will find a steed for you.”

In the distance, wolves howled.

Annaliese lay the sleeping Tomas down on a pallet thick with straw, deep
within the temple of Sigmar and decided to rest alongside him. Just for a
moment, she told herself. She felt like a different person having bathed,
washing the grime from her skin. As she washed, she had been pleased to see that
the muscles of her legs were defined and strong, before she laughed at herself
for her vanity. She would rest her head on the pillow for just a moment, she
told herself. Instantly she fell into a deep, restful sleep, her arm
protectively round the sleeping boy.

Somewhere close by, wolves were howling, but she ignored them, feeling
blessedly safe deep within the stone fortress. Dimly she registered the pounding
of skin drums, but she pushed these intrusions away, thinking they were a part
of her dreams.

They seemed to fade, and she found herself walking in the sunshine through a
golden field. Strangely, she was dressed in armour of shining brilliance, but
she felt completely comfortable in the war gear. She smiled as the sun beat down
upon her, and she brushed her hands through the crops gently swaying in the
light breeze.

A bell sounded close by, sharp and loud, and Annaliese woke with a start.

The room was dimly lit, for someone had turned the lantern down low, though
she had never heard anyone come into the room. The bell tolled urgently, and she
rolled from the pallet and dressed herself quickly. She noticed that Tomas was
no longer asleep on the bed, nor anywhere else in the room.

The bell rang frantically, and she heard the howling of wolves. She had heard
that sound before, in the wilderness hunting with her father. It was the sound
of wolves closing in for the kill.

Eldanair pulled the arrow from the goblin’s neck as he swept past the dead
creature, nocking it to his bowstring. He ran swiftly through the trees, a
shadow in the darkness. He made no sound nor left any mark of his passing bar
the corpses of the slain as he cut between the dense firs, running hard.

He came upon a small clearing on the edge of a cliff face and sprang lightly
up a rocky outcrop, until he stood on its edge, unfazed by the thousand foot
drop below him. From here he could see across to the temple of the human god in
the distance. The sound of the warning bell tolled out across the valley, and
with his keen elven eyes he could see dark shapes swarming towards the temple.

Cursing, he broke into a run again, leaping lightly from his precarious
position on the rock face and striking out towards the building.

Having been denied entrance to the human temple, Eldanair had merely scaled
the walls, unseen and unheard by the sentries. Such dull senses they had! he had
mused. Dropping down to the ground within the compound, he had melted into the
shadows, ghosting after Annaliese.

Despite his ease at circumventing them, he had been impressed with the
temple’s defences. High walls and gates guarded the approach to the temple from
the north and the south, while the east was protected by sheer cliff that
dropped away to the valley far below; the west was guarded by equally impassable
cliffs that towered above.

Distant howling that would have been impossible for a human to discern had
carried to his keen ears, and he caught a whiff of a familiar, hated scent on
the wind. Without pause, he had scaled the north walls and set off into the
trees, hunting the greenskins.

Hearing pounding coming up the road, Eldanair cut to his left, towards the
sound, and he dropped into a crouch beside the bole of an ancient tree. Eldanair
let out a long even breath, waiting for his moment, before he stepped from his
concealment onto the road, and fired.

The arrow slammed into a thick, sloping forehead punching through the bone
and into the brain of the hulking creature. It toppled from the ridged back of a
snorting war boar. The beast swung around to viciously gore its fallen rider
with tusks as long as a man’s forearm. A second arrow punched into the neck of
another rider, but it merely bellowed in rage and yanked its mount brutally in
Eldanair’s direction.

His third arrow sank into the orc’s crude wooden shield, and the creature
roared again, its mouth impossibly large and filled with thick tusk-like teeth.
It hefted a cleaver of huge proportions, and Eldanair rolled neatly out of the
way as the frenzied boar charged him. The orc’s weapon slammed into the trunk of
the tree, a hair’s breadth from Eldanair’s back as the elf rolled to his feet
and he sent two shafts slicing just behind the boar’s shoulder, seeking the
heart. The creature smashed into the ground, dead, its jaw and furred snout
digging a deep furrow in the earth. The greenskin leapt from its back, turning
towards Eldanair.

It might have been of a height equal to the elf had it stood straight up, but
it was stooped, its broad, brutish head buried squarely between its massive
shoulders. Its arms were as thick as tree stumps, and it roared as it leapt
towards Eldanair, spittle dripping from its gaping jaws.

He put two arrows into the creature before it reached him. With its wooden
shield it smashed him to the side, and he staggered to avoid a lethal swing of
its massive weapon. Seeing him off balance, the creature roared again and
charged him, slamming its meaty shoulder into his chest, and he was knocked to
the ground, wincing in pain.

Still, he recovered with inhuman swiftness and grace. His hand flashed out as
he rose to his knee, and a knife embedded itself to the hilt in the orc’s eye
socket. It fell with a groan to the ground, twitched once and was still.
Eldanair swiftly retrieved his knife and broke into a run again.

More greenskins pounded up the road heading towards the temple, and Eldanair
cut to the right, striking out through the fir trees. Keeping off the road, he
made good time, zigzagging through the maze of trees with impossible swiftness.

At last he saw the dark shadow of the wall rising up before him and he broke
from the tree line, throwing his bow over his shoulder as he darted towards the
sheer wall almost fifteen feet high.

He sprang onto the wall, his fingers finding purchase between the rough-hewn
rocks. Praying there was no sentry on this section, he climbed up, his muscles
straining and hissing at the pain in his fingers.

Reaching the top, he threw a leg over the crenelations, and dropped onto the
ramparts in a crouch. Drawing his bow, he glanced along the defensive wall,
seeing the corpses of sentries hacked apart by vicious blows. Crude ladders were
leaning up against the walls, and he saw a goblin cutting the ears from one of
the sentries. Eldanair dispatched the creature with an arrow through the back of
the neck.

Eldanair dropped silently to the ground inside the wall, hugging the
darkness. He darted forwards and crouched beside a covered well, hidden in its
shadow. From here he could see that the portcullis of the gatehouse had been
raised, and jammed open with tree-trunks. The heavy wooden door had been
shattered, and more greenskins were streaming through the now open portal.