01 - Empire in Chaos (27 page)

A knight plunged his sword deep into the beast’s side and it roared,
backhanding the knight to the ground before turning towards Grunwald. The witch
hunter smashed his mace into the orc’s cheek, crushing metal and fracturing
bone.

Ignoring the injuries that would have dropped any man, the armoured orc drove
its knee up into Grunwald’s stomach, and he doubled over, the air forced from
his lungs. The orc followed up the attack with a brutal elbow that struck him on
the side of the head, and the next thing he knew he was flat out on his back,
his vision hazy, and with the creature looming over him.

A white-fletched arrow thudded into its eye socket and it roared. Then a
golden hammer smashed into its head, knocking the creature to its knees. A
second hammer blow crushed its skull and it sank finally to the ground, dark
blood welling from the mortal wound.

White dots of light shimmered before Grunwald’s eyes, but he pushed himself
to his feet, his head ringing.

“We have to move!” shouted Karl. There was just too many of the enemy
attacking from too many sides for the knights to be able to mount an effective
defence.

“Back!” roared Thorrik from the head of the column. “Back to the tunnel!”

Step by painful step, the column retreated from where it had come, swords
flashing and blood spraying. Wounded knights gritting their teeth against the
pain were half-carried half-dragged back by their comrades, while other knights
and the pair of dwarfs formed a protective arc around them.

Eldanair launched arrows through gaps between the tight packed warriors, each
fired with deadly accuracy. Karl fought like a man possessed, his broadsword
carving a bloody swathe through the orcs launching themselves at him. He turned
their heavy blows with his battered shield, and sent lightning ripostes that
ripped throats open and severed vital arteries. Grunwald, his head buzzing,
repacked his pistols with shot and powder, and they boomed loudly in the
enclosed space as the knights backed into the corridor.

With only one route of attack coming against them now, the numbers of the
orcs meant nothing, and Thorrik and Abrek stood side by side in the narrow
entranceway cutting down every enemy that surged against them.

Abrek was bleeding from dozens of cuts, and he snarled like a beast as he
fought. Blood was splattered all over his face, chest and arms, giving him a
daemonic appearance, and he fought with the wild frenzy of a berserker. The
slayer gave no thought to defence, merely intent on attack. His pickaxe was
covered in gore, and he swung it murderously, slamming its spikes through skulls
and puncturing chests with brutal rage.

Thorrik was as resilient as the mountainside itself, and though dozens of
blows rained down on him, few made more than a scratch on his powerful gromril
armour. With every blow that struck against him he seemed to grow more powerful,
his axe-blows falling with greater strength and speed. Nothing seemed able to
breach his defence, and the orcs began to fall back, demoralised and frustrated.

The greenskins pulled back, and a flight of arrows whistled through the air
towards the pair of dwarfs. Though they clattered off Thorrik’s armour and
shield, they sank deep into Abrek’s muscled flesh, and he snarled against the
pain, drool and blood dripping down over his beard. Two arrows protruded from
his chest, one from his thigh and another from his shoulder. Another arrow
sliced into the bunched muscles joining his shoulder and his neck, passing
cleanly through and out the other side. Uncaring of his wounds, he seemed ready
to throw himself back into the fray, but a sharp word from Thorrik held him
back.

Drums and howls from the greenskins seemed to announce the arrival of some
new terror, and there was a blood-curdling roar that erupted from the darkness.
Abrek’s gaze snapped up, his eyes mad and eager, and Thorrik spoke to him again,
quickly and loudly.

The slayer seemed to ignore him, and only a heavy hand on his shoulder
restrained him from hurling himself back into the abandoned arena of battle. He
turned then and spoke quickly and forcefully, and Grunwald saw Thorrik’s
armoured head nod in response. Eldanair sent shafts streaking into the room, and
there were muffled roars as they struck home. The bellow of something far larger
than an orc reverberated once more, and a monstrous, hulking shape loped into
the firelight.

Standing almost eleven feet in height, the creature was hunched and long
limbed, its gangly, powerful arms hanging almost to the ground. Its head was
large and its features exaggerated, a large bulbous nose sprouting from beneath
a pair of malicious yellow eyes. Big flaps of skin hung to either side of its
face, overgrown ears studded with crude bone decorations, and its mouth was a
wide slash with thick, slab-like teeth.

It was naked but for a loincloth of matted fur, and its flesh was the colour
of foul water. In each taloned hand it carried a long bone ending in a bulbous
lump, and as it saw the dwarfs standing in the passage entrance it roared once
again, thick ropes of spittle splattering from its gaping maw. It broke into a
loping run, and Abrek said some final words to Thorrik, before the ironbreaker
slapped the slayer on one meaty, bloody shoulder and turned away.

“Come! We must be quick!” shouted the heavily armoured dwarf as Abrek
screamed incoherently and threw himself towards the troll closing towards him.

His pickaxe was raised high over his head as he ran to his death.

Quickly Thorrik led them down a series of twisting corridors and
side-passages, and Grunwald pushed past the knights to his side.

“He will surely die,” said the witch hunter.

“Aye, if Grimnir favours him,” replied Thorrik curtly.

“You know the way out?” he asked.

“Aye,” replied Thorrik, though he ventured nothing more. The witch hunter
dropped back to Annaliese’s side. It seemed the elf had fallen back as a rear
guard, for he was nowhere to be seen.

In the distance they heard the roar of the troll, though whether they were
bellows of pain or victory was impossible to discern.

“May you find peace at last, Abrek,” intoned Thorrik.

For another day and a half the column wound through the endless twisting
corridors. They encountered few enemies, though the sounds of them were all
around. Thorrik led them relentlessly, his stamina seeming boundless. Eight of
the knights had been killed in the battle against the orcs, and another had died
on the flight through the darkness, slipping and falling hundreds of feet from a
sheer precipice. Karl was angry and sullen, and he travelled in silence, nursing
his own brooding thoughts.

They should be nearing the exit of the accursed mines, Thorrik had said. Two
hours, perhaps three, he estimated. How the dwarf navigated through the maze he
didn’t know, but he was thankful he was with them still.

Thorrik drew the column to halt with a raised hand, and after a few minutes
of silence all could make out the dim flickering of torchlight and hear the
scuffling of many feet. The light came from the passageway ahead, and Grunwald
thought back, trying to picture how far back the last intersection had been—over an hour, he thought.

“We must go around,” hissed Grunwald.

“This is the only way,” replied Thorrik.

“Then we go through them,” said Karl, having made his way to the front of the
column.

The ironbreaker nodded, and Karl ordered his men to be ready. Lanterns were
dimmed, and Thorrik led them forward to a dogleg turn in the passageway. There
they waited in darkness, hearing the stamp of feet and the brutal laughter of
the enemy drawing ever nearer.

In the dim, flickering light of the nearing torches, Grunwald saw Annaliese
leaning against the cold stone wall. A multi-legged insect as long as man’s
forearm crawled down off the wall and onto her shoulder but she managed to catch
her scream before anyone heard her. Hundreds of barbed legs worked in unison,
moving like a series of rolling waves, and the creature crawled down over torso,
over her left leg and onto the ground. Breathing out slowly, she regained her
composure.

As the scuffing of approaching feet seemed to be almost on top of them,
Thorrik and Karl stepped out around the corner, sword and axe cutting down the
lead greenskins whose eyes opened wide in surprise as they died.

Grunwald was a step behind them. “Sigmar smite you!” he shouted as he gunned
down a pair of the enemy with his booming pistols. They were goblins, diminutive
and easily overcome, but the witch hunter could see the larger, more menacing
forms of orcs behind them.

The Knights of the Blazing Sun surged forwards to support their preceptor,
and they smashed into the press of greenskins like a battering ram, crushing
limbs and trampling over the fallen. Thorrik and Karl led the push, hacking at
the frantic goblins, severing limbs and splitting skulls.

There came a strange tingling sensation that Grunwald recognised well,
accompanied by a repulsive metallic sensation on the tongue. Even as he heard
the ghoulish chanting, the hairs on his arms pricked up, and he roared a
warning.

“Sorcery!” he shouted, as the first incantation was completed. There was a
sharp sucking sound, as all the air in the crowded corridor was suddenly
removed, as if by the inhalation of some infernal beast. Then it was exhaled
sharply, and a force of extreme power surged down the passageway. Goblins were
crushed, their bodies hurled aside and it struck the knights. Ornate
breastplates and shields were crumpled by the ghostly green energy, and Grunwald
felt something like a rock-hard fist slam him into the wall.

Knights fell, their helmets bent out of shape by the nigh-on invisible,
pummelling blows, and he saw Thorrik stagger back. Whooping and cackling madly,
the goblins redoubled their attack, and pushed forwards against the knights,
uncaring that they stamped upon their own fallen comrades.

Orcs, big brutes in thick iron armour and wielding heavy cleavers, pushed
through the press to lend their weight to the attack, and even Thorrik was
pushed back by this sudden surge, his feet sliding through the thick layer of
rock-dust upon the floor.

The knight before the witch hunter fell as a cleaver slammed down into his
head, hacking though metal and bone. Hefting his mace in both hands, Grunwald
smashed the weapon onto the orc’s arm, shattering it, and stepped in to deliver
a return blow that crushed the orc’s face.

It fell, but the greenskins pushed forward relentlessly, and another knight
was cut down by a brutal hacking blow that cut his arm off at the shoulder.
Malicious goblins jabbed at the fatally wounded knight with spears, and he fell
amongst them. They cackled gleefully as they ripped his helmet free and clawed
his eyes from his sockets. The cries of the knight were sickening, and still the
greenskins pushed them back.

“There must be another way!” the witch hunter shouted.

“There is none!” came Thorrik’s bellowed reply, as he smashed his axe into
the back of a fallen orc, severing its spine. “This is the only way!”

Bodies were piling up on the floor, and more friends and foes alike were
falling with every passing second. Karl drove the point of his sword through the
face of a leering orc, though the blade got stuck and he could not immediately
dislodge it. A cleaver slammed into the pauldron protecting his shoulder and he
staggered, losing his grip on his weapon. An armoured fist cannoned into the
face of Thorrik’s helm, and the dwarf staggered back a step, losing his footing
on the corpses underfoot. With a curse, the dwarf toppled backwards, and the
greenskins surged forwards.

He heard the chanting of the greenskin shaman, and he tensed himself for
whatever horror would be unleashed. They needed a miracle to win through these
foes, or even to survive, Grunwald saw.

“Sigmar, lend me strength!” came the cry and Annaliese stepped over the prone
figure of Thorrik, her hammer held high in her hands. The voice of the shaman
stumbled, and petered out into a garbled curse. Annaliese smashed her weapon
into the first orc before her, driving it back with a strangled cry. Bones were
shattered and a smell like burning flesh rose from the mortal wound. Grunwald
thought he saw a glowing halo of light surrounding the warrior-woman for a
moment, but he blinked and it was gone.

The orcs backed away in a semi circle from this fury of battle, and with a
cry she was amongst them, wielding the hammer two-handed. It hissed through the
air, and smashed aside a crude wooden shield, breaking the arm holding it.

The Knights of the Blazing Sun pushed to her side, their blades slashing out,
clearly inspired and awed by her fearless attack. Karl was at their fore, having
picked up a fallen weapon, and he skilfully deflected blows aimed at the girl,
protecting her from harm. Eldanair stood at her other side, a long, thin blade
of elven design in his hand, the point darting back and forth in a blur.

With skilful swordsmen protecting her from both sides, Annaliese pushed on,
her hammer rising and falling, crushing bones and shattering swords.

“For Sigmar!” she roared as she shattered the skull of a goblin that turned
to flee, its head crushed like a ripe fruit, splattering blood and brain-matter.
Gore dripped from the head of her weapon, and speckled her cheeks and brow.
Where before the expression upon her face had been serene, now she was vision of
righteous anger.

The fury and aggression soon drained out of Annaliese and she slumped,
exhausted and weary, but the damage had been done. The greenskins were falling
away from the vengeful knights, and Karl and Eldanair stood protectively over
the girl as she knelt on the ground, her eyes closed and her cheeks wan.

The orcs and goblins were cut down mercilessly, and it was Grunwald who
clubbed the life out of the small, hunchbacked goblin sorcerer, breaking first
its limbs and then its neck with a last, savage blow. He cut the pallid,
purplish tongue from the creature’s rancid mouth so that even in death it could
not utter any of its vile magic, and set its corpse ablaze so that nothing but
ashes would remain of its passing.