—<EIGHT>—

A Darkness of the Heart

 

 

Outside, all was chaos. Smoke from burning siege towers painted the sky, and the walls were bloody battlegrounds where the difference between life and death could depend on a step in the wrong direction or an accidental sword thrust. The inside of the city reminded Sigmar greatly of Reikdorf, though he had no citadel to match that of Marius.

Rearing up from the Namathir like a collection of stalagmites, the citadel was a fortress within a fortress, with gates of iron, protected by a deep ditch and a barbican of solid, hoarding-covered parapets. Flags bearing Marius’ crown and trident symbol flapped from the blue-tiled roofs of the towers, while flights of arrows arced from the highest ramparts.

Behind the citadel, the city of Jutonsryk spread down the flanks of the promontory to the sea, and Sigmar could feel the fear of its inhabitants. He read the pulse of the fighting in a second, and his masterful eye saw that the battle for Jutonsryk rested on a knife-edge. Wolfgart appeared at his side, his enormous blade wet and dripping.

“The walls are still holding,” cursed Sigmar.

“We’re too exposed here,” said his sword-brother. “If the Jutones counterattack from that citadel, we’ll be slaughtered.”

“I know,” said Sigmar. “We need more warriors inside the city.”

“Looks like you’ll have some soon!” cried Wolfgart, looking along the length of the wall.

Two hundred yards to Sigmar’s left, Count Otwin stood atop the breach, his naked, spike-pierced body red with blood, and his chained axe raised to the heavens in triumph. Thuringian and Cherusen warriors poured over the rubble, hacking down their fleeing opponents. Having fought their way through the bloodiest possible aspect of a siege, the berserkers and wildmen were drunk on slaughter and hungry for death.

Sigmar took Wolfgart’s arm.

“Go!” he said. “Put something between Otwin and the Jutones. He’ll drown this city in blood if you don’t.”

“Where are you going?”

“I am going to get more warriors inside the city.”

“The gate?” asked Wolfgart.

“Aye, the gate, now go!”

Wolfgart nodded and dragged half of Sigmar’s warriors towards the screaming Thuringians and Cherusens. Wolfgart wouldn’t be able to stop the berserk warriors completely, but Sigmar hoped he could prevent the inevitable fury that followed the carrying of a breach from becoming a wholesale slaughter. He put that thought from his mind, and turned his attention to the task at hand.

He had around thirty warriors with him, hopefully enough for what he had in mind. More would follow when they realised that this gate tower had been taken, but these few were all he could count on for now.

“With me!” he yelled.

Sigmar followed the curve of the tower until he reached the cobbled roadway that ran between it and another gate tower just like it. The mighty gateway of Jutonsryk loomed in the torch-lit darkness between the towers, shuddering under repeated blows from an iron-sheathed battering ram on the other side.

The gate’s heavy wooden structure was braced with thick timbers that had once been the keels of oceangoing ships. Giant chains of iron ran from the top of the gate to an enormous winch and wheel mechanism, which was protected by around a hundred Jutones clad in colourful tunics worn over mail shirts.

The gate’s defenders carried heavy pikes, and were formed up in three lines facing the gate, ready to repulse any assault. Should the gate be broken down, any attackers would run into a solid wall of sharpened iron, or at least any attackers coming from the front…

A strident trumpet blast sounded from the tallest tower of the citadel, and Sigmar looked over his shoulder to see its iron portal opening. A glittering host of armoured horsemen wearing the blue cloaks of Jutone Lancers emerged, riding out to assemble beneath a vivid turquoise and green banner depicting a crown and trident.

“Marius,” whispered Sigmar.

Part of him wanted to charge out to face the king who had caused them to shed so much blood, but that part was Sigmar the warrior. To win this battle, he had to be Sigmar the Emperor. Marius would wait.

Sigmar turned to his warriors and shouted, “For the glory of Ulric! The gate must open!”

He charged towards the gate, Ghal Maraz held over his shoulder. His warriors pounded after him, ferocious war shouts driving them onwards. They were feral hunters, warriors with the taste of blood on their lips and the fires of battle in their veins.

The Jutones cried out in alarm at the sight of them, a thunderous wedge of bloodstained warriors that howled like madmen. They tried to turn and face the threat to their rear, but in the confines of the gateway and with long, cumbersome pikes, such a manouevre was doomed from the outset.

Sigmar smashed his hammer through the spine of a Jutone pikeman, plunging his borrowed sword into the chest of another. The man fell, tearing the sword from Sigmar’s hand. He shifted his grip on his hammer and swung it two-handed, killing again as he plunged deeper and deeper into their ranks. Unberogen warriors cut through the heart of the Jutone defenders, fighting with the strength of Ulric as they sought to emulate their Emperor.

Polearms were cast down and swords unsheathed as the Jutones realised their pikes were useless, and the battle for the gate devolved into a close scrum of stabbing blades and brutal axe blows. Sigmar’s hammer was a blur of dark iron, slashing left and right as he slew the defenders of the gate without mercy. Swords and knives scored his armour, and a stabbing dirk sliced the skin of his arm.

Even with the bloody slaughter of the opening moments of the fight, the Jutones outnumbered the Unberogen three to one, and those numbers were telling. More of Sigmar’s warriors were being cut down, and he knew it was only a matter of time before a lucky blow found a gap in his armour.

A screaming warrior in an orange-dyed tunic stabbed his sword at Sigmar, the blade lancing into his thigh. Sigmar grunted in pain and stepped back as he thundered his fist into the man’s face. He spun away from a thrusting spear and backhanded his hammer into the Jutone warrior’s chest. An axe clanged against his breastplate, and he dropped to one knee as his wounded leg gave out beneath him.

He threw up his hammer to ward off another sword blow, and an iron-shod boot hammered against his helmet. Sigmar rolled and ripped the helm from his head as dizziness swamped him. A pair of Jutone warriors closed on him with their spears aimed at his neck. They stabbed, but before their speartips struck a slashing blur of silver hacked the points from the ends of the polearms. Sigmar looked up to see Wolfgart roaring in anger as his sword swept back and clove through the first Jutone. His reverse stroke all but beheaded the second.

Bestial howls echoed from the gate towers and a host of near-naked warriors with painted and tattooed skin smashed into the Jutones. Wolfgart hooked his arm beneath Sigmar’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. All around him, Thuringians and Cherusens were butchering the Jutones, hacking them to pieces with their swords and axes in a frenzy of bloodletting. King Otwin bashed a man’s brains out on the cobbles, and a naked warrior with hooks embedded in his arms wrestled a Jutone to bloody ribbons.

Within moments, the Jutone defenders were dead, and the berserkers and wildmen roared their triumph in the torch-lit gateway.

Still groggy from the blow to the head, Sigmar said, “What…? How did you get here?”

“You said to put something between Otwin and the Jutones,” said Wolfgart. “I figured this gate would do.”

Sigmar watched as Otwin continued to slam the virtually headless body against the ground, the light of madness in his eyes.

“How?” gasped Sigmar, nauseous from the blow to his head. “The red mist is upon him.”

“I told him you were in danger,” said Wolfgart, showing Sigmar an enormous dent in his breastplate. “Though I had to let him hit me a few times before he knew who I was.”

Sigmar nodded, hearing the shrill blast of a Jutone cavalry horn.

“Get those supports down!” he shouted. “The gate must open or we are lost!”

The Thuringians hurled themselves at the timbers bracing the gate and attacked them with ferocious axe blows. Wood splintered under the assault of blades, and one by one the supports came crashing down.

“Wolfgart,” said Sigmar, “the winch mechanisms! I will get the one on the left, you take the one on the right.”

“It’ll take more than you and I to open this!” cried Wolfgart, but he ran to the winch on the opposite side of the tunnel. Sigmar ran to one of the winches that lifted the gate and shifted the locking bar from the wheel. He dropped Ghal Maraz and began hauling on the spoked wheel, but the gate was designed to be opened by teams of horses yoked to the mechanism.

“It won’t move!” shouted Wolfgart from across the gateway.

“Otwin!” shouted Sigmar. “Gather your warriors and help us!”

The Berserker King looked up from his slaughter and bellowed in answer. Two score men ran to help Sigmar and Wolfgart, bending their backs to haul on the chains and winch. Sigmar’s muscles burned with exertion, and he felt the sinews straining as he fought to push the mechanism.

A thin line of daylight appeared as the gate lifted a hand’s span, and the Thuringian count bellowed at his warriors to push harder. Not to be outdone, the Cherusens chewed more of their wildroots and dug deep into their madness for strength. The line of daylight grew larger, and as the gate began to move upwards, Unberogen, Taleuten and Endal warriors crawled under and wedged iron bars beneath it. More warriors ran in to help with the winch mechanism, and Sigmar released his hold to allow stronger warriors than him to push.

He swept up Ghal Maraz as a squadron of black-armoured horsemen rode under the gate. Count Aldred and Laredus rode at their head, and the captain of the Raven Helms raised his lance in respect when he saw Sigmar. Two score Taleuten Red Scythes and a half-century of White Wolves were mixed with the Endal horsemen, and Sigmar saw Redwane carrying his crimson banner like a lance.

With the gates raised enough to allow cavalry within, the locking bars were dropped, and warriors streamed through the open gate. More horsemen rode with them, and Sigmar ran to a riderless gelding with bloodstains coating its flanks. He gripped the saddle horn and vaulted into the empty saddle. He looped the reins loosely around his wrist, and the horse reared, its front hooves pawing the air.

“Warriors of the empire!” he shouted. “This is our moment! This is where we make our land whole. We will defeat our enemies and make them our brothers. Now ride with me!”

 

Sigmar thundered from the gatehouse at the head of a hundred and fifty horsemen, black-armoured Raven Helms, wild and bearded White Wolves, shaven-headed Taleutens, and Unberogen bowmen. They formed a wedge like a wide-bladed Asoborn spear aimed towards the heart of the Jutone defenders. Warriors on foot followed them in their hundreds, and the misery of two long years of siege was forgotten as they charged into the city of their enemies.

Trumpeting war horns sounded from the walls, and roars of triumph erupted from the attacking warriors as they saw their Emperor ride out with his banner unfurled like a slick of blood on the air. A Jutone flagpole was hacked down from the gatehouse towers, and Sigmar’s army surged towards the opened gate.

From the back of his horse, Sigmar saw the Jutone lancers fighting at the breach in the city walls, riding down any warrior who survived the hails of arrows from the citadel’s towers. A warrior in golden armour with a silver helm led the Jutone cavalry, riding beneath Marius’ banner. Though he could not see the warrior’s face, Sigmar instantly recognised the man’s majestic bearing.

With the Jutone king beyond his fastness, Sigmar angled his horse towards the lancers, knowing that he could end the battle in one fell swoop. A rising series of notes from a Jutone clarion sounded a warning note, and the blue-cloaked lancers expertly wheeled their horses.

Sigmar expected the lancers to ride for the citadel, but he was surprised and not a little impressed that they turned to face him instead. The lancers formed up in a wedge with the golden warrior at their point, and galloped across the killing ground behind the walls towards them. Sigmar guessed there were around a hundred lancers under Marius’ command, heavily armoured horsemen who were clearly skilled warriors. Though Sigmar had more riders alongside him, they were a mix of tribes and most were not as heavily armoured as the Jutones.

Sigmar leaned forwards in his saddle, pressing his heels back hard against the stirrups. He held Ghal Maraz high for all to see and let loose a fearsome war cry. Less than a hundred yards separated the two wedges of horsemen, and Sigmar felt the familiar exultation at riding into battle on the back of a charging steed. The sensation of speed and power was like a wild elixir, and he laughed as he gripped the reins tightly. Truly, the cavalrymen were the kings of the battlefield!

He steered his horse with his thighs, aiming his charge straight towards Marius. The Jutone king unsheathed a curved blade that shimmered with a blue green light. The noise was incredible, the rumbling thunder of so many horses like being in the midst of a storm.

The cavalry met in a deafening clash of iron, bellowing warriors and screaming horses.

Men were punched from their saddles as lances spitted them and splintered under their weight. Swords swung, axes chopped, and the two groups of horsemen were soon tangled together in a heaving mass of struggling warriors. The Jutone Lancers carved a bloody path into Sigmar’s warriors, but they did not escape unscathed. The Raven Helms and White Wolves gave as good as they got, unhorsing scores of enemy warriors with their dark lances and heavy cavalry hammers. The Red Scythes lived up to their name, reaping a fearsome tally with their broad-bladed swords.

Sigmar swung Ghal Maraz at Marius, but the Jutone king swayed aside and slashed his sword at Sigmar’s back as he passed. The blade clanged from Sigmar’s armour, the dwarf-scribed runes flaring as they repelled the enchantments bound within Marius’ sword.

Sigmar heeled his horse, the hooves throwing up sparks from the cobbles as it skidded to a halt. Beside him, Redwane slammed his hammer into a lancer’s chest, toppling him from the saddle with his ribs shattered. Laredus threw aside his splintered lance and drew his black-bladed sword. Count Aldred circled his kicking horse, Ulfshard rising and falling in ghostly arcs of blue light.

What little sense of order the cavalry clash might once have had vanished in the heaving press of horsemen. This was a fight for warriors protected by iron armour, and the Taleutens had ridden clear, though they galloped around the edges, loosing goose-feathered shafts into the combat when targets presented themselves.

Warriors on foot joined the fight, surrounding the battle against the lancers. Cherusen Wildmen dragged them from their saddles, while Count Otwin leapt upon a loose horse and ran amok through the Jutones.

The silver-helmed warrior pulled his mount around in a tight turn, and Sigmar was impressed by the man’s horsemanship. He had expected Marius to be an effete trader, but he had proven himself to be a cunning general. He had also not expected him to be as skilled a rider as he was proving to be. What other surprises might the Jutone king have in store?

Sigmar raked back his spurred stirrups and yelled as he rode at Marius once again. The Jutone king’s sword was aimed at his heart, and Sigmar held Ghal Maraz close.

Marius slashed with his sword, and Sigmar brought Ghal Maraz up to block, but the blade flashed down, aimed not at Sigmar, but at his horse. Blood sprayed the cobbles, and the beast’s front legs went from under it as its lifeblood fountained from its opened throat. Sigmar kicked his feet from the stirrups and hurled himself clear as the horse collapsed. He hit the ground hard and the breath was driven from him as he rolled.

A Jutone lancer swept his sword down at Sigmar, but he ducked beneath the blow and dragged the man from his horse. He slammed his hammer down on the warrior’s chest, and turned to pull himself up into the saddle, but the horse bucked and ran from him before he could mount.

The battle raged around him, and Sigmar desperately hunted for another horse as Marius wheeled his mount and rode back at him. He planted himself before the charging count and sent a prayer for strength to Ulric. The Jutone king’s steed was a towering beast of midnight black, its chest wide and powerful. It wore a caparison of blue silk over its long coat of mail, and Sigmar felt a moment’s regret at what he was going to have to do.

Sigmar watched Marius as he charged in, and the world seemed to recede as his vision narrowed and time became sluggish. All he could hear was the clattering hoofbeats of the horse, all he saw was the snorting breaths from its flared nostrils and the wind of its speed ruffling its plaited mane. Marius’ blue green sword gleamed as it cut the air.

Sigmar’s hammer came up, and, in the moment before he struck, he begged Taal’s forgiveness for taking such a fine specimen from the world.

Marius swung his horse to Sigmar’s right, and the Jutone king’s sword lanced out.

Sigmar stepped straight in front of the horse and brought his hammer down in a sweeping arc upon the beast’s head. All his strength was behind the blow and the horse’s skull split apart as it died. Marius was thrown from his saddle, and the full weight of the charging steed slammed into Sigmar.

The force of the impact was enormous, and Sigmar landed in a sprawled heap on the edge of the cavalry clash. Stars spun before him and he tasted blood. Sigmar groaned and tried to stand, but his body flared with pain. Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself upright, feeling that several ribs had snapped beneath his armour. But for King Kurgan’s gift, he would have broken every bone in his body.

His sky-blue tunic torn and bloody, Marius lay close by, supine amid the chaos his unwillingness to join the empire had spawned. Hundreds of men lay dead or dying around the Jutone king, the cobbles slick with warriors’ blood, blood that need not have been shed if Marius had only submitted to Sigmar’s rule. Sigmar cried out as he pushed himself to his feet, his entire body a mass of bloody wounds and fiery pain.

That pain fanned his fury at Marius into a raging inferno, and he felt the iron chains of his control slipping from him. Sigmar the Emperor diminished, and Sigmar the warrior surged to the fore as he staggered over to his enemy.

Sigmar hauled Marius to his knees, who cried out in pain and fear at the sight of the bloodstained warrior Emperor. Marius had lost his silver helm in the fall from his horse, and long blond hair spilled from a leather circlet at his temples. Dirt coated his handsome face, and he looked up at Sigmar through a mask of blood and sweat.

There was fear in his eyes, and Sigmar revelled in that fear as a red haze of anger and vengeance swept through him.

“Please!” cried Marius. “Mercy!”

“For the likes of you?” roared Sigmar. “Never!”

He lifted his hammer high, ready to dash his foe’s brains out over the cobbles.

Marius raised his hands, as if to ward off his imminent death, and Sigmar laughed at the futility of the gesture.

“So perish all who defy me!” cried Sigmar, and brought the hammer down.

Marius screamed, but before the hammer struck, a powerfully muscled hand flashed out and grabbed the weapon’s haft, halting it in mid-swing. Sigmar looked up in fury, seeing a giant warrior, covered in blood and tattoos, whose temple was pierced by a crown of golden spikes.

Sigmar knew he recognised the warrior, but his fury was a raging storm that blotted out any thoughts, save those of violence. He thundered his fist into the warrior’s face, but the giant lowered his head, and the golden spikes embedded around his skull tore bloody chunks from Sigmar’s hand. The pain was excruciating, and he staggered away from the warrior, as Ghal Maraz was torn from his grip.

The giant dropped the hammer and simply said, “Enough.”

“I’ll kill you!” raged Sigmar, snatching up a fallen axe. “Get out of my way!”

“Don’t be a fool, man!” said the giant. “Killing Marius will be an act of darkness that will taint everything you have achieved.”

“He deserves death,” snarled Sigmar. “Look at all the men who have died here.”

“Aye, maybe he does, but if you kill him, this will all have been for nothing.”

Sigmar’s anger fled in the face of the giant’s words and the pulsing waves of rage and hatred melted away. He dropped to his knees, and blinked away tears as the full horror of what he had been about to do flooded through him.

He looked up at the bloodstained giant. “Otwin?” he said. “Is that you?”

“Aye, Sigmar, it’s me,” said the count of the Thuringians. “Are you calm now?”

Sigmar nodded and took a deep breath, dropping the axe and letting the swelling darkness in his heart diminish. Otwin held out his hand and Sigmar took it, cradling his bloody fist close to his chest. He looked over at Marius, who knelt in the midst of fallen warriors and horses. The Jutone king had climbed unsteadily to his feet, and Sigmar saw that the fighting had ceased. A deathly stillness filled Jutonsryk, as though the world had paused to witness how this drama would play out.

The lancers had thrown down their weapons, but the battle hunger of Sigmar’s warriors was poised and ready to devour the defeated Jutones. He could feel the anger in the air, the battle-born hatred that was the father of all massacres and bloodletting. In that moment, Sigmar felt the truth of the Hag Woman’s warning.

She had warned him to beware the darkness in his heart, but he had believed that he could control it, that he was its master and could wield it in battle without fear of losing control.

He saw the folly of that belief and, but for Otwin’s hand, he would have crossed the line from battle to murder.

Once that line was crossed there was no going back.

Sigmar had allowed his darkness to slip its leash, and it very nearly destroyed everything he had built in one moment of hatred. That it had taken Count Otwin, a warrior who was no stranger to slaughter, to save him from himself was no small irony and a measure of how close Sigmar had come to letting his all too human failings get the better of him.

The future of the empire hung in the balance, and Sigmar knew that this was the most important moment of his life. He nodded to Otwin and reached for Ghal Maraz.

“Give me my hammer,” he said.

“You’re not going to do anything foolish are you, lad?” asked Otwin.

“No.”

“You sure? I don’t want to have to put you on your arse again.”

“I am sure, my friend,” promised Sigmar. “And thank you.”

Otwin shrugged and handed him Ghal Maraz. The hammer felt natural in Sigmar’s grip, a symbol of his rule more than a weapon, a tool for the uniting of men, not their destruction. Sigmar moved past Otwin, and stood before Marius. The Jutone king took a step back, looking warily at Sigmar’s bloody hammer.

“King Marius,” said Sigmar. “We are divided, and in division we are weak. It is my desire that we be united. One land, one people.”

Marius licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair. He straightened his tunic and stood proudly before Sigmar, every inch a king of men.

“You offered me that before,” said Marius. “What makes you think I will accept now?”

“Look around you. Your walls are carried and your warriors defeated. If I order it, your city will burn and all your people will die.”

“Threats are no way to win me to your cause.”

“That was not a threat, it was a statement of fact.”

“Hair-splitting, nothing more.”

“No,” said Sigmar. “I came here with anger in my heart and it almost cost me my soul. I think I hated you, and that hatred blinded me to what it was doing to me. I wish for nothing more than you and your people to be part of the empire. It is all I have ever wanted, and if you could see all that we have achieved, I know you would wish to be part of it.”

“All I wanted was for my people to be left in peace,” said Marius. “It is you who have brought war and bloodshed.”

Sigmar nodded and said, “I know what I have done and I will bear the burden of that for the rest of my days, but put aside notions of blame for the moment. Think of what you might gain as part of the empire: the protection of every warrior in the empire and the brotherhood of fellow kings and your emperor. Jutonsryk grows fat on trade, but with the whole of the empire opened up to you, how much richer might it become? In time, your city will become the jewel of the empire, a gateway to the world beyond our shores!”

“I will be no man’s vassal,” said Marius, but Sigmar saw that his appeal to Marius’ greed and vanity had struck home. “You may have taken my walls, but I’ll not swear allegiance to any man who demands it at the end of a bloody weapon.”

“Nor should you,” agreed Sigmar, dropping to one knee and holding Ghal Maraz out to the king of the Jutones. “I offer you the hammer of Kurgan Ironbeard and place my life in your hands as a symbol of the honest brotherhood I offer. Bear the symbol of my power and judge my heart. If you judge it pure, join with me. If not, then strike me down, and I swear that no man here will ever violate your lands again.”

Sigmar felt a wave of sudden fear sweep through his men as Marius lifted Ghal Maraz. The ancient hammer seemed to pulse with the power of days past, and a tremor worked its way up Marius’ arms. His expression, which had been belligerent and defiant, eased, and his eyes widened at the awesome power bound within the dwarf weapon.

Sigmar saw Marius’ desire to strike him down with the hammer at war with the truth Ghal Maraz represented, and the knowledge of what might be forged with it as a beacon to all men. The Jutone king let out a shuddering breath and reversed the hammer, holding it out to Sigmar in both hands.

“We have been fools,” said Marius. “Pride and anger have divided us, and look at what it has wrought—death and misery.”

“We are but men,” said Sigmar. “It is our curse to allow pride and anger to lead to hatred and fear. From them are spawned the wars that feed the cycle of hatred. Join me so we might put an end to the darkness that sees men divided.”

Sigmar reached out and placed his hands next to those of Marius, so that they held Ghal Maraz together, bound as brothers by that ancient weapon of power.

“One land, one people?” said Marius.

“Always,” agreed Sigmar.

And it was done.