—<NINETEEN>—

Heroes of the Hour

 

 

Tattooed Thuringians dropped from the wall at the head of the viaduct, and followed Sigmar as he charged the mass of screaming Norsii. The first warrior Sigmar reached was a bearded giant with dark skin and eyes that smoked with shimmering fire. A great skull was branded on his chest, and he came at Sigmar with thoughtless hate.

Sigmar ducked a decapitating axe blow, and swung his hammer for the warrior’s legs. Ghal Maraz smashed into his kneecaps and tore his left leg off below the thigh. The warrior screamed and fell, but still swung his sword as Sigmar ran past him. Ulfdar the Berserker led her King’s Blades from the wall, a wedge of painted warriors like savages from the ancient days of the empire. They cut into the Norsii, and Sigmar was struck by the notion that whatever sorcery empowered their foe might also speak to some part of his own warriors.

Though their enemies were engorged with dark magic, Ulfdar and the Thuringians gave no heed to it, for the red mist was upon them and they thirsted only to slay. The warrior with the black banner drew a sword of darkness, its blade etched with runes that mocked those hammered upon Ghal Maraz. Sigmar felt his ancient weapon’s hunger to destroy them.

Thousands of Norsii pushed up from below, but the tight confines of the viaduct denied them the advantage of their superior numbers. Warriors swirled around Sigmar, hideous aberrations of flesh twisted by this shrine to the Dark Gods. Flesh melted, burned and ran beneath its power, yet those afflicted by such change howled in ecstasy to be so touched by the power of the gods. To either side of him, the Thuringian berserkers cut a bloody path towards the debased shrine. They fought without heed for their lives, always attacking, and the Norsii fell back in dismay before these warriors who killed and killed and never retreated.

Sigmar fought through a mob of warriors whose skin had erupted with thorny growths, smashing them aside with deadly sweeps of Ghal Maraz. They split apart as they died, their bodies disintegrating to mulch as Sigmar pushed onwards.

The warrior with the banner stepped towards him, and the Norsii cleared a path for their champion. A full head and shoulders above his fellow tribesmen, the warrior planted the banner beside him, its substance seemingly woven from a thousand rippling black snakes. Waves of malice poured from the banner, and Sigmar recognised the touch of purest evil in its creation.

“You die, mortal!” yelled the warrior, leaping to attack with his sword raised.

Sigmar turned aside the blow, and spun away from the reverse stroke. The blade came at him again, faster than he would have believed possible, but once again he was able to parry the warrior’s attack. Each time the black sword and Ghal Maraz met, sparks flashed with colours that Sigmar could not name. He felt the unholy strength of the warrior, but knew that it was not his own, it was a gift from the gods he called master. Sigmar’s strength was his, earned upon countless battlefields and by right of victory.

The sword lanced out, and Sigmar swayed aside, slamming his hammer into the warrior’s helm. The strength of the blow drove the warrior to his knees, and Sigmar kicked him in the face, toppling him over onto his back. Before his foe could rise, Sigmar swung Ghal Maraz in a mighty overhead blow, as though hammering a stake into the ground, and smashed the warrior’s skull all over the viaduct.

A great wail of anguish went up from the Norsii at the champion’s death, and the Thuringians answered with a howl of triumph. Ulfdar cut down the writhing banner with her axe, and lines of smoke unravelled from its disintegrating substance as it fell, its fate entwined with the champion that bore it.

The battleground before the walls was littered with twisted corpses, and nothing now stood between Sigmar and the damned altar. Howling with manic fury, the Thuringians charged the terrible construction of bone and bloody brass, but the daemon-steeds reared and crushed any who dared come near. Their breath was like furnaces searing the air, and anything that came near them died.

Ulfdar staggered over to him, her naked flesh bruised and streaked with blood. She had been wounded several times, yet appeared not to notice. Her eyes had a glazed, faraway look, and purple liquid dribbled from the corners of her mouth as she pointed at the deathly altar.

“How do we destroy it?” she asked, her words slurred from the enraging narcotics.

“Like this,” he said, turning to face the half-built towers at the top of the viaduct. He lifted Ghal Maraz high and swept it down. A hundred bolts slashed out and hammered into the smoking shrine. The daemon steeds yoked to it screamed as they were cut down, collapsing into mouldering heaps of arrow-shot flesh. The heat from their bones died, and their dark hearts were stilled as the spell that breathed life into their forms was broken.

“Now we kill it,” said Sigmar, hooking Ghal Maraz to his belt and running towards the torn-up shrine. The surviving Thuringians ran with him and skulls tumbled from the monstrous shrine as they took hold of it. Closer now, Sigmar saw that the horrific construction also housed a grotesque reliquary of bones, and a swirling cauldron of blood.

This was why Sigmar had driven the Norsii from the empire. Any last notions of regret at what he had done to that tribe were swept away in the face of this dreadful altar. With the help of the Thuringians, Sigmar pushed the sopping altar to the edge of the viaduct.

“Come on!” he shouted. “Put your backs into it before they return!”

The altar tipped onto its side, and with a final push, toppled over the edge. It tumbled end over end, spilling skulls and blood as it fell.

Sigmar didn’t wait to see it hit the ground.

The Norsii were massing for another attack.

 

Middenheim was ablaze. Pillars of smoke painted the sky, and the smell of burning timber carried to the men on the walls. Smaller, bat-like beasts flew over Pendrag’s fighting men, soaring over the city to drop flaming torches, while their more powerful cousins swooped over the defensive walls. The tinder-dry wood of the city was ripe for burning, and high winds fanned the flames.

Laden with warriors, dozens of the larger beasts were brought down with deadly accurate arrows, but this mattered little, for their purpose was not to fight, simply to deliver their armed burdens. Thrashing monstrosities that were not wholly human, but something far more terrible and violent, fell amid the ranks of defenders, and the carnage was terrible.

Pendrag watched as one of the howling creatures landed less than ten feet away. It had once been a man, but its body had twisted and mutated beyond all reason, and it lashed out with a clawed arm that was bulbous and sheathed in bony blades. Its eyes were filled with madness and fury, and it hurled itself at the horrified defenders with a bestial roar of hunger.

“What are they?” asked Myrsa.

“Something forsaken by all the gods of mercy,” replied Pendrag.

More were dropping every second, screaming maniacs whose flesh was twisted by their devotion to the Dark Gods, and whose minds were raging maelstroms of unreasoning hatred. They fought without weapons, their limbs and strength requiring no sharpened iron to do their killing. Unnatural limbs and vestigial body parts pressed out through shattered plates of armour, and the black eyes of the monsters burned with maddening pain.

Desperate fights broke out randomly along the defensive wall as the frenzied warriors clawed their way through the men of Middenheim. Many were brought down by disciplined spear-thrusts and lucky arrow strikes, but they were tearing a bloody wound in the heart of the defenders. Terrified warriors fell back from the walls, and a gap opened in the defences.

“Ulric’s name!” cried Myrsa. “We’re wide open!”

Pendrag was torn between the urge to fight the maniacal warriors, and the need to defend the slopes, but the sight of the beasts climbing to the walls in the wake of these attacks made the decision for him. He gripped Myrsa’s arm.

“Go! Kill them!” he said. “More beasts will be at the walls soon, and we must be ready for them.” Myrsa nodded.

“It will be done,” he said, and set off towards the nearest monsters.

Pendrag watched him go as a body flew through the air, almost severed at the waist, and a sheet of blood arced upwards. Roaring, snapping and screaming spread from the attack, and he looked up as a shadow passed over him.

A flying beast with an arrow lodged in its chest dropped from the sky, a hulking brute of an enemy warrior clutched in its claws.

“Look out!” shouted Pendrag as the dying creature spiralled downwards. It slammed into the ground behind the wall, its fragile body crushed beneath the monstrous form of the thing that it had carried from the ground. Clad in scraps of armour, the warrior’s flesh seethed with invention, vestigial forms oozing beneath its skin and its distended face like a wax effigy left too close to a fire.

One of the White Wolves rushed in to kill it before it could rise, but hands like pincers smashed him from his feet and pulled him towards its gaping maw. Bloody fangs crunched the warrior’s skull to splinters. Spears punctured its back, but it gave no heed to its wounds as Pendrag rushed to kill it.

Perhaps some part of what was left of its mind recognised a fellow warrior, for it dropped the body it was disembowelling and charged towards Pendrag. Someone shouted a warning, but the Count of Middenheim stood firm in its path. The warped creature reared up, fangs bared and claws extended to tear him apart.

Pendrag’s axe swept down and hacked the creature’s arm from its body, cleaving into its chest and exiting in a spray of ichor from its belly. The beast fell before him, and the men of Middenheim cheered such a mighty blow.

“They can die!” shouted Pendrag. “They are touched by sorcery, but they can die. Now kill them all!”

As though ashamed of their brief moment of panic, the warriors of Middenheim fell upon the screaming once-men, cutting them down without mercy and forcing them back to the edge of the city. The White Wolves killed a warrior-beast with a nest of claws for hands and curling horns sprouting from its shoulders and back. It tore at them as it died, its madness driving it to acts of carnage even as its lifeblood pooled beneath it.

Another beast, with budding heads oozing through the flesh of its chest, hurled broken men aside with lashing, blade-tipped tentacles instead of arms.

It had to be hacked into a dozen pieces before it would die.

 

Wolfgart tried to make sense of the confused melee raging through the tunnels, but it was impossible. Flames danced on the floor, and pools of oil burned where lamps had been dropped in death or panic. Shadows leapt across the walls. The caves below Middenheim were lonely battlegrounds, where men fought in the claustrophobic passageways, stabbing at shadows and dying alone in the dark.

Scores of the hooded invaders poured from the cave-in, and his warriors fought to hold them from getting past. It was a losing battle, for tides of bloated rats swarmed the tunnel, biting and dragging men down with their furry bodies. The reek of the sewers came with them, and Wolfgart had already stabbed dozens from his legs. His tunic was in tatters where he had cut himself in his desperation.

As loathsome as these vermin were, it was the hideous, rat-faced beasts that walked upright in imitation of man that struck the greatest terror into Wolfgart’s men. So human and yet so bestial, their flame-lit faces were malicious and cunning, a mockery of man’s intelligence.

The giant auger-carrier battered its way into the tunnels, and the rat-beasts followed in the wake of its bludgeoning attacks. Elongated fangs bit through flesh and armour, and the power of its enormous arms broke men in two if they came too close.

Wolfgart heard shouts of alarm from far off tunnels. Clearly this was not the only breakthrough into the warrens beneath Middenheim.

The monstrous rat-beast charged him, its spine hunched over in the cramped tunnel, and he ducked a crushing sweep of its deadly auger. The conical blades still spun, sending chunks of rock flying as it bit into the wall. Wolfgart slammed his mace into the monster’s side, the flesh stitched and raw-looking. Bones broke and flesh caved in beneath the blow, but the monster gave no sign that it was even aware he had struck it.

Its auger stabbed down, and Wolfgart leapt back, slashing his dagger across its twitching snout. Blood burst from its mouth, and he stumbled away from the monster. A rusted sword scraped across his chest, skidding over the mail links and slashing his cheek. Wolfgart lashed out with instinct rather than skill, and was rewarded by a squeal of pain.

A creature that was a smaller version of the giant fell broken, but before he could even register its death, the huge monster threw itself at him once again. Its claws caught his mail shirt and slammed him against a wall. Stars exploded before him as the force of the impact drove the breath from his lungs. Through the haze of pain, Wolfgart saw its arm draw back for a thunderous punch.

He ducked, and its fist pulverised a section of wall behind him. Wolfgart reached up and slashed his dagger at the monster’s throat as it bellowed in pain. Fur and sinew parted beneath the desperate slash, and Wolfgart was sprayed in a hosing squirt of blood. The creature’s iron grip relaxed and it dropped to its knees, as though mystified as to why its strength was failing.

He spat blood from his mouth and wiped his eyes clean with his sleeve.

It was impossible to read the flow of the battle, for so much of it was fought in darkness. Weapons clashed, but who, if anyone, was winning was a mystery. Wolfgart leapt over the giant rat-thing and plunged into the tunnels, stabbing and crushing any invaders he came across. His warriors fought in blind terror, a host of panicked men wildly swinging swords at their chittering attackers.

The hot confines of the tunnels were hellish to fight in, and every blow was fuelled by his fear of this dark, terrible place. A sword lunged at him from the shadows, and he batted it aside with his mace. Flickering firelight illuminated the frightened face of the miner, Sargall.

“Watch it, damn you!” shouted Wolfgart, his voice carrying to all the men who still fought in the tunnels. “Strike the enemy, not your friends!”

“Sorry!” cried Sargall, and Wolfgart saw the man was in tears. “I thought you were one of them! Ulric save us, we’re all going to die down here, they’re going to kill us all.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” barked Wolfgart. “Now shut up.”

He heard a scrape of metal on stone, and turned with his weapons raised as a pack of hunched forms emerged from the darkness.

“Come on then, you bastards!” he yelled. “Here I am! Come and get me!”

They were clad in black armour, and vile segmented tails whipped at their backs. Spears jabbed at him, and no sooner had he turned the first aside than a host of rats swarmed from the walls, leaping from ledges and nubs of rock to attack him.

He hurled himself against the wall, crushing half a dozen and dislodging yet more. A spear slashed for his neck, and he blocked it with the haft of his mace. Sargall screamed as a rat-thing stabbed him in the belly and the rats swarmed over him. Two of the spear-carriers ran at Wolfgart, and he roared as he ran at them.

The first died as Wolfgart jammed his dagger through the rusted plates of armour protecting its chest, and twisted the blade up under its ribs. It squealed in agony as it died, and he hurled it back as the second came at him. He slammed his mace into its toothy jaw, and it dropped dead at his feet. Screams and the sounds of battle rang deafeningly from the walls of the tunnels, the echoes magnified and distorted by the close confines.

He heard a crash of stone, and choking dust billowed along the length of the tunnel.

Gods, more of the damn things!

A spear pierced his side, and he grunted in pain. Rats climbed his trews and bit his legs. Teeth snapped on his hamstrings, and the pain sent a bolt of white fire zipping up his spine. Wolfgart cried out, and dropped to one knee as more rats swarmed him. He dropped to the floor of the tunnel and thrashed like a madman, crushing rats as he rolled in pain and desperation. Blades stabbed at him, some drawing his blood, some that of the rats. His attackers seemed not to care which.

He lashed out with his mace, trying to clear some space, but it was hopeless, and he filled the air with curses at the thought of dying like this, far from the world of men and without his sword in his hand. Wolfgart tried to regain his feet, but the weight of rats was too heavy, and he could not rise.

“Ulrike!” he shouted, as a vision of his daughter filled his mind. Sadness filled him as he thought of all the years he would miss of her life.

A hooded figure in armour reared over him with a long, serrated dagger, and its furry snout twitched in anticipation of killing him. Wolfgart could taste the rankness of its hissing breath and smell the reek of foulness on its twisted body. The dagger swept up, but before it could plunge down, the creature’s head flew off, and the tunnel was filled with light.

The rats pinning Wolfgart to the ground fled, scurrying off into the darkness, and he scrambled onto his backside, reaching for his dagger and mace.

Wolfgart shielded his eyes from the source of the blinding light, seeing a number of short, armoured figures in gleaming plates of silver, bronze and gold advancing towards him.

“Back, you devils!” he roared, blinking furiously as his eyes adjusted to the illumination.

One of the armoured figures shouldered a bloody axe and knelt before him. The warrior raised the visor of its helmet, revealing a bearded face and a stern, but not unkind expression of recognition.

Wolfgart laughed and let out a shuddering breath.

“Once again the dwarfs come to the aid of you man-lings,” said Master Alaric with a wicked grin. “It’s getting to be a habit.”

 

The viaduct and northern flank of the Fauschlag Rock were assaulted with the greatest ferocity, but the eastern and western flanks also came under heavy attack. Conn Carsten’s Udose fought with great courage, keeping the swarms of beasts from the makeshift ramparts with powerful sweeps of their wide-bladed broadswords. Their battles were fought to the tunes of gloriously heartbreaking laments played by pipers who marched through the thick of the fighting, heedless of the danger.

Skirling tunes of lost loves and ancient wrongs provided a stirring backdrop for the clansmen, an emotional reminder of that for which they fought. Time and time again the beasts were hurled back, and each time the ingenious insults of the clansmen chased the bloody survivors away. Wineskins of grain liquor were passed around during each lull in the fighting, and though scores of fighters were dead and crippled, the mood was light, for the Udose were never happier than when they were in battle.

Carsten’s warriors came from dozens of different clans, men and women who had been killing each other only weeks before in bitter internecine power struggles, but who now fought like lifelong sword-brothers. When the fighting was over they would go back to their feuding, and none would have it any other way.

As Sigmar was casting the dread altar from the viaduct, and Pendrag brought down the last of the forsaken once-men, another ravening pack of beasts climbed the eastern cliffs. Once again, Conn Carsten called his warriors to battle in his grim and humourless manner, and every clansman readied his sword.

But this attack was to be something different.

Borne up the rock face by a monstrous bear-creature, a robed beast-shaman with the shaggy look of a bullish goat and the twisting antlers of a stag climbed onto the upper slopes of Middenheim. Arrows hammered the forest beasts as soon as they appeared, but the shaman uttered guttural words of power in a dark tongue, and they burst into flame.

Instead of charging the defensive wall, the beasts gathered below the Udose, snarling and roaring as the beast-shaman chanted a filthy incantation. A creature with a body that was a meld of man and fox with sable fur threw itself to its knees before the beast-shaman, its head thrown back and its throat bared. A slash of the beast-shaman’s claws and its black blood arced up to spatter the grotesque sorcerer. Bathed in sacrificial blood, the beast-shaman let loose an ecstatic cry, its clawed hands twisting and tearing at the air.

At first it seemed as though nothing was happening, but within moments it was clear that something was horribly wrong. It began among the clan warriors of the Gallis. Their hurled insults changed, losing the form of speech and becoming honking brays, bellowed roars and bestial growls.

Horrified cries rippled outwards as the men and women of the Gallis began convulsing and the full terror of the beast-shaman’s sorcery took hold. Proud Udose warriors fell on all fours as their bones cracked and reshaped into new and hideous forms. Flesh slithered and swelled, bristling fur empted from pink flesh, and screams of terror became animal barks.

Men fought to get away from these abominable transformations, and as the beast within each man took hold, the newly-birthed monsters threw themselves at their former comrades-in-arms. Within moments, the Udose were in disarray as the horribly altered warriors of the Gallis went on a bloody rampage, fangs tearing out throats and claws ripping flesh from bones. The pipes fell silent and the songs died, as what had begun as a gloriously raucous fight became a desperate battle for survival.

As the Udose formation collapsed, the beasts below attacked.

And there was no one to stop them.

 

A very different battle was fought on the western flank of Middenheim, where the forces of Count Marius manned the defences. The Jutones had come to the City of the White Wolf with a host of mercenaries, men with olive skin who hailed from a sun-baked land far to the south. They spoke strangely, yet their skill in the art of killing needed no translation.

Marius watched with disdain as the mutant abominations gathered on the slopes. Creatures with the powerfully muscled bodies of bears and wolves roared and stalked the cliffs of the Fauschlag Rock, wary of the deadly weapons of the men that could kill from afar.

“Why do they bother?” he wondered aloud.

“My lord?” asked his aide-de-camp, a handsome youth named Bastiaan.

Marius waved a manicured hand at the slavering beasts.

“What can such aberrations know of civilisation and commerce?” he asked. “The Norsii seek to conquer the lands of the south, but what will they do with such a prize? Become merchants? Learn to farm the land? Hardly.”

“I do not know, my lord,” said Bastiaan, ever the sycophant. The boy was efficient and attended to his needs with alacrity. Sometimes he even said things of interest. “Perhaps vengeance drives them. You yourself have led hunts into the forest to cull such creatures.”

“True, but war is a means of extending one’s will across the world,” said Marius. “War for the sake of vengeance is ultimately pointless. There is no profit in it.”

“Not all wars are fought for profit, my lord.”

“Nonsense, Bastiaan, analyse any conflict closely enough and you will find a lust for gold at its heart.”

“The Norsii and these beasts do not fight for gold.”

“Which is why disciplined volleys of crossbow bolts have hurled every attack from the rock,” Marius said. “Not a single beast has survived to reach the wall.” He drew his sword, the eastern-styled cavalry blade shimmering with a hazy light in the evening sun. “You see? This is the first time I have drawn my sword today. It has yet to be blooded.”

Bastiaan nodded towards the rapt faces of the Jutone warriors.

“Maybe so,” he said, “but I believe your warriors desire to meet their foes blade to blade.”

“I am sure they will, but not yet,” said Marius. “It will be better for the mercenaries to bear the brunt of the beasts’ attack.”

“You doubt the courage of your warriors?”

“Not at all, but dead mercenaries do not require payment,” explained Marius.

“Of course, my lord,” said Bastiaan. “I shall alter our account ledgers.”

Marius smiled at the thought, picturing the secret treasure vaults hidden in the depths of the Namathir. Even with Sigmar’s ludicrously unfair levies and tithes after the battle of Jutonsryk, Marius still had more gold than any man could hope to spend in a dozen lifetimes. A young courtier had once remarked that his love of gold was akin to that of a dwarf, and though the remark was astute, Marius had the boy whipped to death.

More of the beasts were gathering, and they were getting dangerously close. Marius frowned as he realised the mercenary crossbowmen were allowing them to climb unmolested towards the defensive wall. He felt tingling warmth in his hand as a strange, bitter taste of metal fizzed in the air.

“What in the name of Manann are those fools doing?” demanded Marius. “Why are they not loosing their bolts?” The taste of metal grew stronger and the hairs on the back of his neck stood erect in a primal warning of danger.

“I… I don’t know, my lord,” said Bastiaan, his voice sounding dreamlike. “Perhaps they don’t want to hit all the chests of gold.”

Marius gave the boy a sidelong glance.

“What foolishness are you talking about?” he asked. “What gold?”

“There,” whispered Bastiaan, moving towards the wall. “So much gold!”

Marius watched in horror as the mercenaries climbed over the defensive wall, fighting one another as they made their way towards the beasts without fear. A muttered ripple of heated conversation came from the ranks of Jutone warriors behind him. He turned to rebuke them for breaking silence, but his harsh words trailed off as he saw the glassy avarice in their eyes, each man lost in a dream of something wonderful.

The warmth in his hand became heat, and he looked down to see the etched lettering running the length of his sword blade shimmering as though bathed in twilight. The golden-skinned king who had presented it to him had claimed it could turn aside evil spells, though Marius hadn’t believed him at the time. A whispering evil urged him to sheath the blade, but Marius knew that his sword’s power was all that was protecting him from whatever fell sorcery affected his warriors.

Bastiaan had reached the wall, but Marius ran forward and took hold of his arm.

“Get back here, boy,” snapped Marius. No sooner had he touched his aide-de-camp than the boy shuddered and blinked in surprise. He looked from Marius to the beasts and back again.

“What did you do with it?” he cried, tears spilling down his cheeks.

“With what?” demanded Marius. “Have you lost your mind?”

“The gold!” shouted Bastiaan. “It was there… All the gold in the world. It was mine!”

“There is no gold there, you fool!” said Marius. “Snap out of it, you are ensorcelled.”

Bastiaan shook off Marius’ grip.

“Of course you’d say that!” he protested. “You want to keep it all for yourself! You don’t want anyone else to have any of your precious gold!”

Marius slapped Bastiaan, tired of the boy’s theatrics. He brushed past the youth and leaned over the wall. The olive-skinned mercenaries were almost at the bottom of the slope. None of them had their weapons drawn, and their movements were like those of sleepwalkers.

Marius saw the dreadful hunger in the eyes of the monsters. Saliva drooled from their jaws and he knew that he had only seconds to act.

He turned to shout at his Jutone warriors, but before he could open his mouth, searing pain exploded in his side. Marius looked down and saw the golden hilt of an exquisitely fashioned knife pressed against his leather and silk doublet. Blood welled around the blade, and he watched, uncomprehending, as it spilled onto the stone flags.

Bastiaan twisted the knife, and Marius cried out in pain, clutching his aide-de-camp’s shoulder as the strength in his legs gave out.

“I won’t let you take the gold!” hissed Bastiaan. “It’s mine. All mine. You can’t have it!”

“There is no gold,” whispered Marius, sagging to the ground, and leaning against the wall as his vision greyed. He heard the screams of the mercenaries as the beasts tore them apart, and the slaughter began.

We failed, thought Marius, and this city will fall.