01 - Empire in Chaos (42 page)

“For Sigmar!” Grunwald roared again, his voice cutting across the field.

Annaliese began to walk through the confused ranks of soldiers, her head held
high and the wind ruffling her blonde hair as she strode forward, the banner
held up above her head.

Like a ripple that spread across a lake from the tiniest pebble being thrown
into its centre, the mindless rout was stemmed. Seeing other soldiers turning to
watch the girl stride through the army, more and more warriors halted their
flight and turned back towards the foe.

“The Maiden of Sigmar!” someone bellowed, and the shout was repeated,
rippling along the lines and filling the hearts of the warriors with new hope.

Grunwald shook his head in disbelief as he followed in the wake of Annaliese.
Soldiers pressed tightly all around, pushing and shoving as they marched behind
the Maiden of Sigmar.

To the very front of the Empire army she walked, holding the banner aloft. A
clear path opened up before her, and she strode through it. Then, with no more
men before her she stared defiantly out across the open field, strewn with the
dead, towards the infernal ranks of dark warriors drawing ever nearer.

She lifted her hammer high into the air.

“For Sigmar!” she shouted, and the entire army of the Empire echoed her.

Then, shouting her defiance, she broke into a run, heading straight for the
heart of the enemy lines. With a roar, the army of the Ostermark surged forward
around her.

The men of the Empire fought with inspired, devout fury, but they were as
children against the massive armoured chosen warriors of the Dark Gods, and they
were cut down in their hundreds.

The soldiers formed a protective shield around Annaliese, desperate to ensure
the Maiden came to no harm, but they were fighting a losing battle.

One of them was cut down, his arm hacked off at the shoulder and he fell
screaming. Another was smashed in the face by a massive armoured gauntlet, and
he stumbled. A sword punched through his breastplate and he was lifted high into
the air before being hurled from the blade with a dismissive flick.

The chosen of Chaos were like demi gods of war, and they butchered their way
through the Empire lines. They strode into the breach before Annaliese, hacking
down Empire soldiers to the left and right. Grunwald pushed forward and smashed
his mace into the faceplate of the first, piercing the metal, but the warrior
did not fall, and he back-handed the witch hunter, sending him staggering back.
Thorrik bellowed a dwarfen war cry and smashed his axe into the warrior’s
midriff, cleaving through the thick metal and felling the mighty foe, but others
laid into the soldiers surrounding Annaliese, destroying and killing everything
in their path.

Then the enemy lines parted, and the fell warlord of Chaos appeared, astride
his towering black infernal steed. The massive beast stamped its barbed hooves,
smoke rising from beneath them, and its eyes were lit with blue flame. Tusks
emerged from its equine mouth, and steam filled the air with each powerful
exhalation.

The warlord was huge, and the blazing blue eye hanging in the air between the
curving horns of its helmet was locked on the defiant figure of Annaliese,
holding the banner in one hand and her hammer of Sigmar in the other. The lord
of Chaos could see that the resolve of the Empire army centred around the girl,
and he approached her with sickening finality, intending to break her and send
her soul screaming to the realms of Chaos.

The battle raged on around them, but Annaliese was suddenly oblivious to
anything but this awesome and terrible being.

Nausea and crippling sickness struck all who gazed upon the thrice-cursed
figure. Its features were hidden beneath a full-faced helm, though brilliant
azure flames blazed in its eye sockets, the startling colour reflected upon the
shimmering surface of the raven-feather cloak draped over the warlord’s broad
shoulders.

In one huge, spiked gauntlet the dread lord held its spiked glaive, the haft
easily ten feet long and covered in bony spurs. It lifted its other gauntleted
hand into the air, and a crackling sphere of pale light appeared in its palm,
blue sparks of electricity flickering up its arm.

Nobody moved, entranced by the power of the devil before them, and Annaliese
lifted her head high, staring into the eyes of the enemy even as her soul
cringed and recoiled within her.

The flaming blue eye of the gods that hung above the warlord’s head flicked
to the left as there was a sudden flash of movement at Annaliese’s side.
Eldanair, his movements swifter than the human eye, had nocked an arrow to the
bow he had unslung from his back, and drew back the string to fire. Faster even
than the speed of the elf, the warlord hurled the ball of light held in its
hand, and it smashed Eldanair in the chest, throwing him backwards, arcing
electricity engulfing his body.

Annaliese cried out.

Thorrik stepped forth hefting his axe, but was smashed aside by the powerful
blow of a Chaos warrior, and Grunwald levelled his pistol at the warlord’s head,
and fired.

The blue eye of the gods flicked in his direction, and he felt his soul
shrink. The slitted iris of the daemonic eye widened slightly as it focused on
the lead shot, and it was halted a mere foot away from the warlord’s head,
hovering impossibly in the air before him.

The warlord swung his head in Grunwald’s direction, and the shot reversed its
direction. It smashed into the witch hunter’s shoulder and he fell with a shout
of pain.

Then the dread lord of Chaos turned his eye back towards Annaliese, and he
spoke. His voice was that of a daemon, a thousand voices speaking within him,
and he spoke not in any tongue that would be understood by the soldiers of the
Empire.

Nevertheless, his words were understood, as if reformed in the air, making
them comprehensible to all.

“I am but the herald of the Raven Host, its harbinger. Know before you die
that everything you have ever known will be smashed asunder, destroyed and
forgotten. Everyone you have ever known will be slaughtered and their souls
tortured for all eternity for daring to resist the great gods. And now, bitch of
the weakling man-god Sigmar,” he said, his voice full of madness and horror,
“you shall die.”

The warlord guided his steed forwards, looming over Annaliese, and she could
feel the hot, foetid breath of the creature, smell the diabolic stink of its
unnatural presence. She lifted her hammer up into the air before her, a
seemingly futile, tokenistic show of defiance. She felt very small and utterly
alone, and the voice of the creature pounded in her mind.

Your soul shall be a delicate morsel for the Great Changer of Ways.

She felt the edges of her sanity begin to fray, and her heart was beating so
hard in her chest it blocked out all sound, blood pumping heavily in her head.

Any moment, she would be cut down, impaled upon the glaive wielded by this
fell lord of destruction, her bones smashed beneath the pawing hooves of his
infernal steed. Her soul would be ripped screaming from her shattered physical
form and enslaved to the daemon gods of Chaos, there to exist in an eternity of
torment amidst a roiling nightmare.

“Sigmar,” she whispered, her voice sounding tiny and insignificant against
the inferno of hateful sounds entering her head. She prayed that their
bloodthirsty enemy had been held at bay for long enough that the armies of the
Emperor in Talabecland would not be overwhelmed. She prayed that her sacrifice
and the sacrifice of the soldiers of the Ostermark was not in vain.

A thunderous din rose amongst the chaotic roar of battle raging around her,
and she raised her face to the heavens in despair as death drew near. The
deafening rumble of thunder increased in intensity, and dimly she registered the
sound of brass horns blaring like infernal trumpets summoning her to hell.

The flaming blue eye flicked to the right, its slitted pupil contracting and
expanding, and Annaliese looked around her in confusion.

A living wall of knights appeared, smashing through the enemy ranks and
crushing the warriors of Chaos beneath them. She saw lances pierce chests daubed
with infernal symbols, and swords smash down through horned helmets. The knights
were armoured in gleaming silver, and mighty plumes of red and white rippled in
the air on their helms. They bore shields of white emblazoned with Imperial
wreathed skulls and crosses, the symbols of the Emperor himself. They ploughed
through the enemy, and Annaliese stared up at them in wonder and awe.

With a roar of denial and outrage, the lord of Chaos swung his glaive, the
daemon weapon wreathed in coalescing light as it ripped through the air, renting
the fabric of reality. The blade sheared through the chest of the first knight
as if it were paper, cleaving the warrior in two. With his return blow, the
warlord thrust the blade of his weapon deep into the armoured chest of another
knight’s steed, lifting the screaming beast high into the air and tossing it and
its rider over his shoulder.

Annaliese stumbled as knights galloped past her in a blur and she expected to
be smashed to the ground and trampled at any moment. An arm steadied her, and
she saw Grunwald at her side, his arm a bloody ruin. She saw the witch hunter
staring up at the knights thundering around them in amazement, the pain of his
wound forgotten. It was as if they were cupped in the protective hands of Sigmar
Himself as they stood there unscathed by the mayhem around them.

The lord of Chaos roared again, the deafening sound filled with rage and
defiance, as his bodyguard was lost beneath the lances, swords and hooves of the
knights.

He speared his glaive through the lowered visor of another knight, punching
him from the saddle as the blade burst from the back of his skull, and swung the
butt of the weapon into the head of a steed, breaking its neck and sending its
rider flying through the air.

Lances pierced the body of the warlord and he staggered, but refused to fall.
Another pair of knights were hacked in two by the fell glaive. Swords struck his
ornate armour, sending the warlord reeling, and another knight was decapitated.
The flaming blue eye flicked left and right, seeking escape, but there was none
to be had. The damned warrior ripped the head from a knight’s shoulders with the
flick of his wrist, but the mighty warlord was at last driven to his knees as a
sword blazing with white light slashed across his chest, carving through armour
and the mutated flesh beneath.

His face lit with the cold blue light emanating from the daemonic eye, Kurt
Helborg, Grand Marshal of the Reiksguard knights, dismounted and stood before
the broken enemy warlord. He glared down at the champion of the Raven Host in
hatred and loathing.

“Know that the Empire will resist you always,” he hissed. “Not until the last
drop of blood in the last soldier of this land is spilled shall you have
victory.”

With a roar of fury, the Reiksmarshal thrust his glowing sword, the Runefang
of Solland, straight into the Chaos champion’s face. He drove the point through
the eye socket of the warlord’s helmet with such force that it emerged hissing
and spitting from the back of the skull, shearing through his ornate, horned
helmet. The Reiksmarshal continued pushing the blade on until the hilt of the
Runefang struck bone.

With a sucking sound of displaced air the blue eye flickered and disappeared,
and the warlord of the Raven Host collapsed to the ground, dead.

Led by the mighty charge of the Reiksguard knights, the Order of the Griffon
descended on the battlefield and smashed through the reeling enemy army with the
force of a battering ram. Thousands on both sides were killed in the slaughter,
but at last the field was clear of the foe.

“This is but the beginning,” said the Reiksmarshal Kurt Helborg, his
carefully weighted words echoing across the bloodied but triumphant army.

“The armies of the Raven Host are massing. They overrun Ostland and
Talabecland, and the Ostermark is in ruin. They march south, and push towards
Altdorf.”

There were mutterings of shock and fear amongst the soldiers, and the
Reiksmarshal raised his hand for silence.

“But there is still hope, even in this hour of darkness. Your victory this
day shall be a golden light in the grim night, an inspiration that speaks of the
proud fighting spirit of our nation. You have held this field—and if it were
lost, then the ruin of the Empire was assured. Unchecked, this horde would have
marched through Talabecland unmolested, and fallen on the flank of our armies
there. In the Emperor’s name, I thank you for your bravery and your resolve.”

The Reiksmarshal turned his mighty steed around, stalking back along in front
of the serried ranks of weary soldiers.

“Far to the north, the great city Praag has been taken by the enemy, just as
it was during the time of Magnus the Pious. But there is still hope.”

Not a sound came from the gathered army, for every soldier was intent on the
words of the Reiksmarshal.

“The Order of the Griffon marches to war. Even now in Kislev, in the frozen
north, our armies lay siege to Praag. They fight to reclaim it for the forces of
order.

“Still there is hope!” he bellowed. “With brave soldiers like you men of the
Ostermark, the Empire
will
hold firm. In the name of our founder and
patron god, I swear this to you, soldiers of the Ostermark: we none of us shall
rest until the forces of destruction are shattered utterly!”

The Reiksmarshal’s strong voice rose to a roaring fury, and he bellowed his
words across the gathered army, his face set in determination and hatred.

“Together we will push them back to the north and reclaim Praag, but we shall
not be content with that. No, we shall hound them like rabid wolves, and hunt
them down wherever they seek to hide! We shall drive them back to the hell from
whence they came and pursue them still. Far to the north we shall march, taking
the fight to them directly, and we shall not rest until the Inevitable City
itself lies in smoking ruin! For Sigmar!”