03 - God King (25 page)

“I don’t know, maybe,” said Wolfgart. “Why?”

“We were friends as youngsters,” answered Wenyld. “The years have taken us
down different paths, but it would be pleasant to see him again.”

“I vaguely remember the pair of you trying to get a look at my Blood Night,
the evening before Sigmar rode to Astofen for the first time.”

“You remember that night? I thought you were too drunk.”

“Not so drunk I don’t remember you falling on your arse and running like the
Olfhednar themselves were after your manhood.”

“Aye, well it’s not every day you’re caught by the king’s son on his Blood
Night.”

“Sigmar and I tried it once, and we got the thrashing of our lives.”

“Maybe you should have run as fast as I did.”

Wolfgart smiled. “Maybe, lad, maybe.”

He reined in his horse and dismounted before the Oathstone, the earth around
it trod by a thousand people every day. He knelt beside the red stone, its rough
surface warm and threaded with golden veins. Those veins were thinner than they
had been when Sigmar had made them swear their oath to help him build the
Empire, and he hoped that wasn’t an omen.

“I miss you,” he whispered, thinking of Maedbh and Ulrike.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he felt the Oathstone grow hot
to the touch. He tried to pull his hand back, but it was stuck fast to the
stone. Wolfgart gasped as he felt the heat travel up the length of his arm, his
vision swimming as unknown power held him in its grasp.

“What…?” he managed as his vision greyed and he saw a host of chariots riding
through hills of rolling greensward in his mind’s eye. Armoured in black and
gold, they were escorted by hundreds of horsemen and painted warriors in mail
shirts who marched beneath banners of gold and red.

He recognised the landscape around Three Hills, and the chariot at the front
of the army as that of Queen Freya. The woman at the reins was not Maedbh, and a
gathering evil loomed over the Asoborns, a doom that none could see, but which
was slowly enveloping them in its encroaching shadow.

The vision of Freya’s army was overlaid with the sight of Maedbh and Ulrike
standing side by side on a wooded hillside. Both loosed arrows into an oncoming
horde of the dead, but he could tell from their expressions that it wouldn’t be
nearly enough to stop them. His heart broke to see the fear on their faces.

Death stalked these lands, and he wanted to scream, but he had no voice, no
way to warn the Asoborns that their enemies were almost upon them or that he was
aware of their plight. He heard wolves, noble, white-furred heralds of Ulric,
and knew they were calling to him, demanding he take action.

A sudden, twisting sense of vertigo seized him, and he felt himself falling
his arms windmilling for balance. The visions faded from sight, and the harsh
angles and stone walls of Reikdorf snapped back into focus. Wolfgart’s stomach
lurched and he put a hand out to steady himself, his gut churning in fear.

“What in Ulric’s name just happened there?” demanded Wenyld, and Wolfgart
looked up to see the warrior holding onto his shoulders. The golden lines on the
Oathstone pulsed with life, now even thinner, as though the stone had all but
exhausted its power to grant him this vision.

“I have to go,” said Wolfgart, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. He ran
to his horse and vaulted into the saddle.

“What are you talking about?” demanded Wenyld. “We’ve only just got back.”

“My family is in danger,” said Wolfgart. “And I have to go to
them.”

Freya’s army left Three Hills in triumph, cheered by those whose age or
wounds prevented them from joining their queen. Three thousand warriors marched
or rode south-east through the rolling landscape, moving quickly towards the
River Aver, the watercourse that effectively divided Asoborn lands from those of
the Brigundians.

Within three days, the army came within sight of the mighty river that ran
from the Worlds Edge Mountains through the Empire before emptying into the sea
at Marburg.

Here, the coming winter had made the landscape flat and hard, ideal for
chariots and cavalry, and the army moved into marching column as it followed the
river east towards the river crossing at Averstrun.

Despite the grim skies that wreathed the world in bleak twilight, the army’s
spirits were high. Freya was an inspirational presence, taking many lovers en
route and ensuring that overblown erotic tales spread through the camp quicker
than a dose of the pox. As always, Freya led from the front, her black and gold
chariot unmistakable among the less ornate chariots of the Asoborn warriors.

With the river on the army’s right flank, Asoborn horse archers galloped
wide, while the heavier lancers rode closer to the main body of the infantry and
chariots. By noon of the fourth day of march, Freya sent word back down the line
that she had spied the river crossing and their enemy.

Blocking the crossing were a thousand dead warriors in ancient armour,
arranged like a row of obsidian statues in a mausoleum. All were clad in rusted
bronze, the weak light glinting from the corrosion on the rings of their mail.
An eldritch green light glimmered in the empty eye sockets of each warrior and a
hundred knights sat on skeletal horses on either flank. Flocks of carrion birds
gathered for the feast and the few trees in the scattered patches of woodland
were thick with screeching bats.

A warrior in gleaming silver armour sat upon a hellish steed at the centre of
the host, black wings like smoke billowing from its flanks. Khaled al-Muntasir
was an incongruous sight amid this army of darkness, and his wondrous form drew
all the light to him, such that he shone like a legendary hero of old.

Freya wasted no time in arraying her army for battle, issuing orders with
customary fire and fury. The Asoborn infantry moved into four blocks of five
hundred, spears and swords held in fists that demanded vengeance for the loss of
the Brigundians and Menogoths. With the chariots thrown out before her main
battle line, the heavy horse rode out to the flanks, ready to roll up the line
of the dead warriors.

Bare chested horse archers whooped and yelled as they rode around the army of
the dead, loosing flurries of arrows into the massed ranks of skeletal warriors.

Though the dead had no flesh to damage or organs to pierce, the barbed shafts
felled them just as surely as they would a mortal man. Intended to provoke a
reckless charge rather than inflict mass casualties, the arrows of the horse
archers did little but fell a few score of the dead warriors.

Ululating Asoborn war horns signalled the advance, and the infantry moved
forward, moving at a brisk trot to cover the ground between the two armies.
Freya led the advance, her chariot thundering towards the serried ranks of the
dead with hundreds more behind her. The hard ground threw up no dust with their
passage, and the entire army witnessed the horror of what happened next.

Before Freya’s horn blew to signal the turn, Khaled al-Muntasir aimed his
sword at the earth before the charging chariots. The hard ground cracked and
split as hundreds upon hundreds of dry, fleshless corpses clawed their way to
the world above, dust and earth spilling from their empty skulls and opened
jaws. Unable to stop or turn, the chariots slammed into them with a tremendous
crash of dried bone and wood.

Asoborn chariots were never meant to be run straight into the enemy, but
raced along the front of a foe’s formation. Archers would loose arrows into the
faces of the enemy at point-blank range, and spear bearers would hurl heavy,
iron-tipped shafts into the warriors pressing in from behind. To run a chariot
straight into the foe would certainly kill a great many of the enemy, but would,
more often than not, destroy the chariot and kill the riders and horses.

The chariots came apart in a screaming bray of pain, both animal and human.
Most simply shattered in the impact, but some overturned, crushing their crews
and breaking the horses’ legs. The queen’s chariot vanished in a crash of
shattered timber, broken apart by the violence of the impact. Hundreds more were
destroyed in explosions of splintering timber, hurling their crews to the ground
or breaking them beneath the wheels of those behind them. Only the quickest
crews were able to avoid the catastrophic collision of dead bodies and screaming
horses, but in doing so they bled off the speed that kept them safe.

Grasping skeletons clawed their way onto the chariots, attacking with broken
swords or cudgels salvaged from the vast swathe of wreckage left by the
destruction of the chariots. Khaled al-Muntasir swept his sword up and hundreds
of rotten-fleshed wolves burst from the ranks of the dead warriors at the river.
They fell upon the struggling Asoborns with dreadful hunger, jaws tearing open
throats and claws raking warm flesh from the bone.

The warriors blocking the river crossing marched forward in dreadful unison,
each bony footfall crashing down at the same time as they fell upon those the
wolves hadn’t yet killed. Swords and spears stabbed and slashed with mechanical
precision, and the entangled Asoborns were cut down without mercy.

Freya’s shield maidens dragged her bloodied body from the wreckage, fighting
with all the fury of berserkers as the rest of the army raced forward to rescue
their fallen queen. The black skeletons chopped through the ruin of the
chariots, killing anything living they could find.

Asoborn cavalry charged towards the flanks of the dead army, but the corpse
knights wheeled their skeletal mounts and raced towards them as hundreds of
leathery-winged bats launched themselves from the trees. Green fire flickered
around the undead knights, their blades shimmering with ghostly light, and the
two forces met in a thunderous clash of iron. Asoborn lances smashed through
ancient armour, splintering as the weight of the dead broke them apart.
Screeching bats tore at the Asoborn riders, clawing their faces and entangling
their blades with their wings and stinking bodies. Both forces of horsemen
swirled together, hacking at one another with swords and axes, but within
seconds it was clear the Asoborn charge was doomed.

In the centre of the battle, Khaled al-Muntasir danced through the fighting,
his gleaming sword slaying all it cut. No weapon could touch him, no warrior lay
him low, and he slid through the scattered Asoborns like a ghost, leaving a
trail of bodies in his wake. Tattooed warrior women of the Myrmidian sects
formed a ring of screaming fury around him, but within moments, all were dead,
gutted, beheaded or fatally pierced by his quicksilver blade. Malign clouds of
sable light billowed around the blood drinker, a miasma of dark sorcery that
drained the life from any who came near him and animated the corpses of those he
had killed.

The ranks of the dead swelled with every passing moment, for the newly slain
rose up to attack their former comrades, bloodied and mangled charioteers
clawing at men and women they had broken bread with only that same morning. The
encircling horns of the dead army began to envelop the Asoborns, but even at
this desperate moment, the battle could have been saved.

At that critical moment, when one spark of heroism or fear could have turned
the tide of the fighting, a warrior named Daegal, a lad no older than twelve
summers who had trained and fought with Maedbh, turned and fled from the horror
of the bloodletting. His sword and shield forgotten, Daegal ran in blind terror,
and his panic spread to those around him.

Within moments, hundreds of Asoborns were fleeing the battle, desperate to
escape the slaughter and frantic to live. The battle line collapsed as the
fragile courage of the mortal army broke in the face of this nightmare horde.

But there was to be no such easy escape.

The dread knights rode down the fleeing Asoborns, trampling them beneath the
pellucid fire of their mounts’ hooves or chopping them down with pounding blows
of their swords. The encircling army of the dead surrounded the dying Asoborn
host, drawing it into a black embrace of massacre.

Only a handful of mortals escaped the slaughter, the queen’s shield maidens
and a hundred or so warriors who had been first to flee. Their shame burned
almost as hot as the relief that they still lived, and as darkness fell, barely
a tenth of the queen’s army escaped into the hills.

Khaled al-Muntasir stood triumphant, his army arranged across the battlefield
in silence as the crows and ravens pecked the choicest morsels from the defeated
army. The blood drinker let them have their feast, for what could be more
terrifying to a mortal warrior than to later face one of his own kind with eyes
pecked out, flesh partially eaten and tongue hanging loose on rotten sinews?

As Morrslieb slipped from behind the clouds to bathe the blood-soaked field
in its rich, emerald moonlight, he uttered the words given to him by Nagash and
laughed long into the night as the vanquished Asoborns rose to their feet once
more.

Without any orders needing to be issued, the army of the dead arrayed itself
for march, moving in deathly silence and utter precision as they followed the
route Queen Freya’s doomed army had taken.

Back towards Three Hills.

Volleys of arrows flew overhead, slashing down the causeway and slicing into
grey, lifeless flesh. Bordan’s foresters loosed more arrows, and another clutch
of the dead were felled. The viaduct from the ground was thick with dead
warriors, partially decayed men and women lurching and swaying towards
Middenheim with horrid purpose and grotesque hunger moaning from their slack
jaws.

“Got to hand it to Bordan’s men,” said Holstef, the beast-horn clarion
clutched tightly in his gauntleted fist. “They’re killing everything they hit.”