CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was the gunshot that saved them. The gunshot and the fact that van Delft was high enough above the camp to hear it. Following his usual habit he had climbed to the top tier of the central pyramid, a suitable eyrie from which to watch his little army working upon their fortifications.
And working they were. The rumours which had raced around the camp after Florin’s return, each more bloodcurdling than the last, had motivated the mercenaries in a way that no officer ever could have. Most of the men were already stripped to the waist as they toiled, their backs damp with sweat even before the last of the mist had cleared. Toiling away to the shouted instructions of their sergeants they built up sliding ramparts, or lashed together the bundles of stakes that teethed these primitive earthworks, or sharpened the points on their spikes.
Thorgrimm, beard thrust out with the dignity of his new authority, strode from one quarter to the next, telling the captains what to do. His dwarf warriors marched behind him in two neat files, and occasionally he would dispatch a pair of them to work alongside their human comrades. Their very presence seemed enough to bolster the humans’ efforts, the relative chaos of their techniques resolving itself into a clockwork precision as the dwarfs took charge.
Not for the first time, van Delft congratulated himself for having had the foresight to hire Thorgrimm’s company. Time and again they had proven their worth, even though they’d driven a harder bargain than anybody else. Van Delft turned to look at the cannon they had positioned up here, the metalwork around the muzzle a gargoyle’s head of bronze. He was staring at it unseeingly, his mind playing with the idea of becoming an agent for Thorgrimm’s band of mercenaries after he’d retired, when he heard the gunshot.
It was very faint. In fact, it was so muffled by undergrowth and distance that if it had not been for a chance gust of wind, van Delft wouldn’t have heard it at all. But carry the sound the warm breeze did, and van Delft turned in the direction from which it had come. He was squinting through the last rising tendrils of mist, wondering if he’d been mistaken, when Sigmar sent a sign.
It came as an eruption of tiny coloured shapes, dozens of them bursting up from the canopy like fireworks on Walpurgisnacht. The flock’s distant plumage was startling against the dull vegetation from which they’d sprung, the fiery colours unique in a world of green.
Van Delft watched them fluttering skywards, the beat of their wings so panicked that the whole jungle might have become one huge predator. Every instinct in his scarred old body screamed to him that this was the warning he had been expecting, and he cursed himself for a fool. Why had he listened to Thorgrimm and Kereveld? He had known, deep down, that they’d been wrong, that yesterday had been the time to go.
“May the gods curse money-grubbing mercenaries,” he muttered to himself, then, for once careless of his dignity, he made a funnel of his hands and began to bellow the call to battle stations.
“What’s he shouting about?” Lorenzo asked sourly, looking up from digging towards the gesticulating shape of van Delft above them.
“I’m not sure. Can’t quite make it out,” Florin frowned. Although still pale and sickly-looking from his week of “gallivanting”, as Lorenzo had called it, he was already feeling strong. Apart from the discomforting way in which his bowels seemed to have turned to water, and the discomfort of the tapestry of cuts and bruises that purpled almost every inch of him, he felt as good as new.
That was what he had told Orbrant, anyway. The sergeant had tried to protest when Florin had left his pallet to come and take charge of his quarter’s defences, but Florin had overruled him. After the lonely desperation of his escape he wanted to be amongst others, wanted to see them and hear them. He’d even taken some pleasure from smelling them, although the reassuring qualities of the soldiers’ stale sweat was already losing its novelty.
Florin had even made Thorgrimm welcome when he’d come to give his advice. Although even more dour than usual after last night’s argument, the dwarf had eventually shared some of Florin’s tobacco, mellowed by the alacrity with which his instructions had been carried out.
They had been following these instructions, knee-deep in mud whilst cutting the sides of their defensive ditch into a steeper angle, when van Delft had started yelling.
“Quiet, men,” Florin called out. “The Colonel’s saying something.”
The scraping of improvised picks and wood-carved shovels came to a ragged halt, the men leaning on them and peering up curiously at their colonel.
This time his words rang out as loud as a funeral bell.
“What is it?” Lorenzo asked warily as he saw his master’s face pale.
“They’re coming,” Florin muttered, running his fingers through his hair and chewing the inside of his cheek.
“What?”
Ignoring the question Florin swallowed against the sudden dryness in his mouth and turned to his men. Holding his posture and modulating his voice into the bluff confidence of a true poker player, he creased his eyes into a confident smile.
“Right, men. Looks like this is it. Tools away, weapons out. Sergeant Orbrant,” raising his voice against the burst of sudden activity Florin singled out the warrior, keen to seek his advice. “A word, if you please. And Lorenzo, go and see the Colonel. Tell him you’re the company’s messenger. Tell him we’ll be ready in five minutes.”
“Right you are, boss,” Lorenzo said, gratefully dropping his spade and vaulting out of the ditch. Behind him he could hear the cries of the company, the excited chatter and nervous laughter of the men interspersed with the harsh snap of commands as Florin and Orbrant bullied them into a line abreast their defences.
Their voices faded as Lorenzo rattled up the scaffold that climbed the pyramid, the particular sounds of their preparations lost amongst all the other companies. The Kislevites, for some reason, seemed to be preparing themselves by bursting into song.
Drunk again, lucky wretches, Lorenzo thought, and snapped off a salute to the Colonel.
But the Colonel wasn’t watching. His eyes were focused on the tree-line, his mouth drawn into a hard line of determination as he waited for the enemy to come.
The skinks that had devoured the patrol had taken the longest route. As swiftly as hares in a field, as silently as trout in a stream, they raced through the tangled depths of their domain, cutting through the jungle in a long, wide arc that took them around the human infested ruins and into position on the far side.
Elsewhere other swarms were racing to their own positions, each pack of skinks sweeping a great stampede of fleeing prey animals before it. Savage boars smashed their way through the undergrowth, the thorns sliding harmlessly off their armoured hides. Golden-eyed pumas slunk through clearings or leapt from branch to branch. Poison-toothed komodos ran high-legged along the runs of their territories, or disappeared into deep, defendable burrows.
And all the while birds leapt and fluttered nervously from tree to tree, flitting up and away when the skinks approached. The sloths and lemurs they left behind froze into near invisibility, their bodies moulded tightly to the bark of their trees.
But the animals’ fears were, for once, misplaced. The lizardmen were hunting for only one type of prey today. They didn’t even pause to gather abandoned eggs, or to overwhelm the solitary sow whose desperate courage kept her standing guard over her newborn boarlets.
Soon, even as the commotion of their advance spread through the surrounding jungle, each of the skink swarms found its position. They waited then, the pink snapcases of their mouths opening like flytraps in the jungle gloom as they panted and waited.
Noon approached. As the shadows shrank, the skinks’ breathing stilled, their pulses slowing as they waited in calm anticipation. There was none of the nervous energy that fizzed amongst the humans here, not a trace of any tension, just the unmoving silence of ambush, and the certainty that soon, very soon, their bellies would be full of sweet meat.
“What a noise,” Florin snapped irritably, and wished that the guinea fowl were within range. They had hurtled out of the tree-line five minutes before, the commotion they’d made sending a thrill of alarm through the waiting men. One of them had even fired, braving Orbrant’s wrath with the waste of ammunition.
Not that Orbrant seemed to share the tension that permeated the defenders. He stood behind the battle line that he had drawn up against the palisade, his warhammer resting on his shoulder like a favourite pet. And where other men chewed lips or tugged earlobes or sweated and scratched Orbrant remained absolutely still, his features composed into a perfection of contentment.
Florin watched him with reluctant admiration. He was beginning to realise that, unlike any other single individual here, Orbrant was actually looking forward to the coming battle.
Somehow that didn’t surprise him.
The guinea fowl wandered closer, filling the air with the rusty screech of their voices. The noise grated across Florin’s tightly strung nerves, and he glared at the birds viciously. As if in response to his disapproving stare they suddenly fell silent, as if themselves listening to some other animal.
“Here they come, sir,” Orbrant smiled, and began to limber up his arm by swishing the warhammer back and forth.
“How do you know?” Florin asked him irritably.
“Watch those birds,” the Sigmarite said, nodding towards the silent guinea fowl.
Florin watched. Right on cue the entire flock burst out of the elephant grass, stubby wings blurring as they dragged their plump bodies laboriously up into the sky. A moment later the waist-high grass that marched to the forest’s edge began to shift and stir, the seed-topped tufts of it shaking back and forth as if in a high wind.
“Is that them?” Florin asked, although he already knew the answer. Careful as the skinks were, there were too many of them, moving too fast, to remain hidden. Occasionally their crests would bob into view, the orange triangles cutting through the elephant grass like sharks’ fins through water.
One of the Bretonnians, the sweat pouring off him, fired. The noise of the shot brought an uncharacteristically gentle reprimand from Orbrant.
“Reload,” he told the man, his voice calm. “And wait.”
As the skinks drew closer Florin could hear cries of warning coming from the other quarters of their primitive stockade. The musical chatter of the Tileans’ voices mingled with the guttural snapping of the Marienburgers and, from the other side of the complex, the harsh sibilance of the Kislevites. Yet despite the differences in accent all the voices were united by a common emotion.
Now the enemy were a hundred and twenty yards away, now a hundred. Florin fought with the temptation to give the order to fire. The skinks were already in range, barely, but he and Orbrant had agreed to wait until each of the companies’ dozen gunners could be sure of a kill. They would only have time for one volley, so it had better be made to count.
Now the skinks were within eighty yards, the black, onyx tips of their spears glinting with an eerie white light as they bobbed above the trampled grass.
A ragged volley of shots rang out behind Florin, then a series of shrill sounding commands. There was a sudden scream, the bloodcurdling sound drowned out a sudden, deafening roar as the dwarf cannon lent its voice to the argument.
Now the skinks had drawn close enough for Florin to see the dark slashes of pupils that cut through the gold of their eyes. They had started to run with their heads up, abandoning any attempt at stealth as they closed in on their prey.
Florin looked at Orbrant, who nodded.
“Gunners,” Florin called, as he saw one of them blink. “Ready!”
The dozen gunners sighted along the lengths of their barrels, eyes watering against the smouldering matches that hovered above the firing pans.
“Aim!”
Through the steel Vs of their sights the gunners selected their targets, watching them leap or snarl for the last time.
“Fire!”
The gunners fired. With the single deafening boom of a perfectly timed volley their bullets hissed through the elephant grass to smack into the cold bodies of the enemy. They died even before they smelled the blackpowder stench, their bodies thrown back to twitch brokenly beneath the rushing feet of their brethren’s advance.
Taking the volley as their signal the bombardiers, five men chosen for the strength of their throwing arms, rushed to take the fire from the gunners’ fuses. Cradling their bombs they turned them this way and that, trying to ignore the pattering of the approaching horde as they coaxed the fuses into sparkling life.
“Bombardiers,” Florin cried, dismayed that the gunners had done nothing to slow the onrushing horde. “Throw!”
With a last anxious glance at the hissing fuses the men drew their arms back and lobbed the bombs forward.
“Heads down!” Florin warned as the steel spheres tumbled into the grass beyond, their white fuses disintegrating into ash.
The first of the skinks had already thrown itself across the ditch, its claws scrabbling at the sliding earth of the palisade, as the iron cases of the bombs blossomed into sudden, horrific violence.
One explosion followed the next, a fire-cracker peal of terrible destruction which choked the air with billowing smoke and splattering blood. Hail storms of iron shredded through the stunned ranks of the enemy, the Shockwaves tossing their leaders high into the air to spin around like gory Catherine wheels.
Despite the ringing in his ears, and despite the fog of acrid black-powder smoke which burned in his nose, Florin felt a roar of savage joy burst from his lips. One of his men, who had been too slow to duck, staggered past him, his face a mask of blood from the iron splinter which had buried itself in his scalp, but Florin was deaf to his screams.
His fear had gone. His restraint had gone. Now at last he had the chance to pay back the cruelties which these filthy lizards had inflicted upon him, and upon the vengeful ghosts who had haunted his dreams. He hefted his machete impatiently, and a dangerous, maniacal grin split his features as the first of the enemy struggled over the parapet.
It didn’t stand a chance. With a single, backhanded stroke Florin sent its head spinning back into the mud of the ditch. On either side of him halberdiers chopped down into targets of their own, their heavy blades biting hungrily into scale and bone.
But for every one they killed two more came surging up, squeezing between the gaps in the stakes that lined the palisade. Despite the ferocity of the defenders the skinks pushed forward, trampling their dead in their eagerness to be upon the foe.
A few of the gunners had managed to reload, scrabbling wild handfuls of powder and shot into their steaming matchlocks. As some of their comrades stumbled and fell beneath the weight of the assault, they aimed into the mass of reptilian bodies before them and fired.
The shock of the volley punched the assault back and, as the explosion of one of the guns sent another man screaming to the ground, his mates charged forward with a ragged cheer. Swinging the intricately crafted weapons with savage cries they fell upon the skinks, hacking into them with a desperate ferocity.
Florin shared their bloodthirsty enthusiasm. The madness of battle sang in his veins as he slashed at the enemy, swearing with frustration when he missed, jeering when he drew blood.
Gradually the battle reached an uneasy equilibrium, both sides locked in a brutal close quarter brawl that staggered back and forth over the top of the palisade. In an attempt to break this grinding deadlock, the skink first-spawned sent parties of his brethren clambering over the ruins which marked the flanks of the humans’ stockade. They swarmed upwards eagerly, their webbed feet gripping the cyclopean stonework as effortlessly as chameleons on an outhouse wall.
It was Orbrant who saw the outflanking manoeuvre. Some instinct whispered a warning in his ear and he looked up in time to see the first of the flanking parties cresting the stonework. Bellowing above the sound of the battle he raced down the line, pulling half a dozen gunners from the fight and roared at them to reload their bloodstained and splintered firearms. He watched them fill and prime their weapons and then, using his hammer to direct their fire as a conductor uses his baton to conduct an orchestra, he sent their fire into the interlopers.
The Sigmarite watched the first of the skinks slapped off the stonework before turning and throwing himself back into the struggling mass atop the palisade. By now the first wild exhilaration of battle had left the men, leaving in its place nothing but a numbness, a single-minded drive to slaughter the enemy before the enemy could slaughter them. Blood and sweat slicked the men’s skin, as, with joyless determination they fought on.
And gradually, one by one, the Bretonnians were being slaughtered like draft horses, falling beneath the relentless onslaught of the skinks’ attack.
But the skinks were faring even worse. Funnelled by Thorgrimm’s sturdy engineering into a narrow battlefront, their advance became stuck upon the sharpened stakes of the palisade like butterflies upon pins, where they were easy prey for the steel of the humans.
Yet still they charged forward, their assault aided by the countless corpses that filled the ditch and blunted the palisade. More of them scaled around the sides, scuttling up the sheer stone surfaces of the outer temples. Most of these were plucked from their perches by gunfire, the rest threw themselves down with a mindless courage to die from crushed bones or vengeful blades.
Cold blood and hot mingled on the barricades, steel met onyx, razored teeth met fire and lead. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the skinks’ attack began to falter. As the corpses of the strongest were trampled underfoot by their weaker brethren, and as the dwarfs turned their cannon to rake across the rearguard, the ferocity bled slowly out of their charge.
When the attack stopped it seemed like a miracle. One moment the Bretonnians were fighting tooth and claw with an endless tide of the horrors. A moment later and the lizardmen were drawing back.
The defenders let their arms droop, snatching the couple of seconds’ rest the respite gave them, and then, with a single, shrill chirrup of command, the attacking swarm split into two columns and streamed away to either side.
A wild cheer went up from the humans’ line, exultant despite the jagged edge of exhaustion and shock. It climbed higher as the last of the skinks burst into a sprint, the wordless roar interspersed with jeers and insults. Then the last rank of them melted away, and the Bretonnians fell suddenly silent.
Expressions of joy melted into grey masks of shock, raised fists were lowered, stomachs grew heavy with despair. Even Florin, hardened by his hatred of his erstwhile captors, felt the fight bleeding out of him as he realized that this was no victory.
This was just the beginning, the calm before the storm of the lizardmen’s true assault.
The great bone plates of their wide-jawed heads towering over the scattering flotsam of their lesser brethren, their taloned feet beating the earth in perfect step, a single, vast column of saurus marched into view. Their armoured hides were untouched by shrapnel or bullet, and their bulging muscles were untired by any combat. As fresh as a new dawn they hurried to do one-sided battle against their exhausted foe.
Florin knew now why the skinks had fled when they had. It was a tactic he’d seen often enough in the bar brawls of Bordeleaux. They called it a switch and cut, a muggers’ trick whereby one man ducked out of the way a second before his mate’s cosh came swinging through the space where he’d been standing.
The skinks had been the cover. The saurus were the cosh.
There was no doubting who the victim would be.
Florin spat and swore, and tried to look confident.
“Looks like we’re in for another round, men,” he said, holding his voice steady in an iron grip of manufactured confidence “We’ll cut through this lot like we did their mates. Let’s close those ranks.”
Much good it would do them, though. This time the channelled melee would go against the men, that much was certain. In the messy, face to face butchery of the palisades the saurus had every advantage—strength, ferocity and sheer brute force. They had the weapons, too, great sickle-bladed swords and chitinous shields that glinted in the sun like the doors of one of the hells.
“Gunners,” Orbrant called as the saurus, their pace neither rushed nor hesitant, approached to within the last hundred yards. “Gunners to form a back rank. Come on, come on. Keep those heathen temples clear of the little ’uns, or at least keep their heads down. I’ll keep the palisade clear.”
So saying the Sigmarite strode forward, the boisterous grin which creased his face making him look younger. Stronger. He found his place in the decimated line of defenders, cut the air with his warhammer like a cat with its tail, and punched the man beside him on the arm.
“Are you ready?” he asked him, eyes alight with an unholy joy.
“Yes, sergeant,” the man muttered miserably, his own eyes locked on the advancing monsters. Somehow they seemed to be grinning.
“I said,” Orbrant repeated menacingly, “are you ready?”
“Yes, sergeant,” This time the man tore his eyes away from the foe for long enough to look at his officer.
“What?” Orbrant snapped.
“Yes,” the man dared to snap back.
“Are you ready?” Orbrant snarled, teeth bared.
“Yes,” he bellowed.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes!” More voices were raised in answer to the question and Orbrant, seeming to swell with a terrible energy, chuckled.
“Are you ready?” he roared, lifting his warhammer aloft so that sunlight flared from the gromril of its construction, as white and blinding as a banner of the Sigmar himself.
“Yeeeeessss!” the men roared back, the fire of the warrior priest’s burning spirit leaping amongst them as a flame leaps from one straw thatch to the next. The hairs lifted on the napes of their necks. Their spines straightened. They lifted weapons that felt suddenly light, and their faces split open in death’s head grins. Orbrant watched them with a terrible pride, seeing in their battered bodies and ugly faces the presence of his god.
By all that’s holy, he thought, thank Sigmar for the gift of war.
And he prepared for the charge.
Van Delft had watched the lizardmen’s assault unfolding with a professional detachment; a certain admiration, even. The enemy had launched four perfectly synchronized attacks, the separate groups not only emerging from the tree-line at the same time, but managing to time the impacts of their charges almost to the second.
If it hadn’t been for Thorgrimm’s fortifications van Delft had no doubt that the first wave would have annihilated his little army, washing away his formations as easily as a rising tide destroys a sandcastle.
As it was the flanks held, just. The Tileans had balked once, but a well-timed volley from the dwarfs’ gunners had given them the breathing space they’d needed to regroup under their captain’s passionate entreaties.
The Marienburgers had fared a little better, their well equipped and expertly disciplined ranks forming a meat grinder into which the enemy hurled themselves with suicidal courage. The Bretonnians had done just as well, although their losses had been heavier. Fully a quarter of their number lay dying across their palisade, and the rest were so blood-soaked that the gore almost seemed to be a regimental marking.
But the real surprise had been the Kislevites. Despite their captain’s obvious reluctance to lead from the front they had fought like daemons. Their barbaric Ulrician battle hymns had cleaved the air as their axes had cleaved the enemy, the razored blades chopping through their ranks with the easy confidence of lumberjacks felling trees.
It was no surprise then that the real attack, when it came, came against the Bretonnians.
If van Delft had dared to hope, that folly left him when he saw the enemies’ true warriors. The massive reptiles that came marching out of the jungle in a single, well ordered column were every inch the horrors that Florin had described. Taller than men, their massive heads flared back from their snouts like arrowheads, the weapons they carried seemed almost superfluous.
Van Delft realized that his jaw had fallen open whilst he’d been watching them. He snapped it shut.
“Captain Thorgrimm. I have a new target for you.”
The dwarf, who’d been busily pacing up and down the ranks of his gunners, tossing his axe from hand to hand with bloodthirsty impatience, turned and followed van Delft’s gaze.
“Yes,” he nodded, as he saw the vast column of saurus warriors. “They could do with a bit of softening up.”
He spat a stream of orders at the cannon crew, the language as hard and flinty as the stone of the temple upon which they stood, then stooped to help them drag the weapon to a new position.
The first shot rang out a moment later, the cannon vomiting out a blur of iron. It whistled over the Bretonnians’ heads, bounced on the churned-up earth beyond them, and sliced through the saurus’ ranks as uselessly as a razor through a slab of ham.
Without waiting for the order the dwarfs were already swabbing out the barrel, ready for the next shot, but van Delft knew that it wasn’t going to be enough. Turning away from the Bretonnians he looked suspiciously at the southern tree-line. It seemed to be empty. Seemed to be.
The Colonel bit his lip and cursed himself for not having used more time clearing the obscuring undergrowth. He wanted to take men from the remaining three flanks upon which the skink charge had faltered, yet if he did, how could he know that another attack wouldn’t fall upon the weakened defences?
He tugged at the tips of his moustaches and turned back to watch the saurus as they advanced towards the remnant of d’Artaud’s command. Even above the din of battle he could feel their feet beating the constant, remorseless rhythm of an executioner’s drum roll.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes in silent prayer.
“Sigmar be with me,” he muttered, his hand closing around the hard edges of the hammer talisman he wore beneath his uniform. His daughters had given it to him a decade ago, and although he’d mocked them for being so generous with his money, he had come to treasure the tiny memento.
“Be with me.”
The sounds of battle faded. A moment passed, long and silent. He opened his eyes again, and the world had become clear, his decision obvious. After all, what other choice did he have?
“Lorenzo,” he said, singling out the Bretonnian from the runners that stood waiting for his orders. “Go back to your unit. I don’t need you here anymore. And you other three, go back to your units and tell your captains that every other man’s to go to the Bretonnian line. Once there they’ll serve under d’Artaud. Got it? Good. Well, go on then!”
Van Delft watched them scurry away, secure in the knowledge that for the moment, he had done his duty. He stepped back and almost trod on Kereveld.
“Ah, there you are…” the Colonel began, then stopped. The wizard’s bony old body might be there, but his mind was far, far away. His eyes were rolled up like a dead man’s, his skin as pale as death. In fact, the only sign that he was still a living man and not some standing corpse was the movement of his lips as they whispered silent gibberish, and the spasmodic twitching of his fingers.
Van Delft remembered the devastation that Kereveld had caused last time he’d practised his godless art, and for a second he considered shaking the wizard out of his trance.
A second later he thought better of it. After all, what did they have to lose?
Miles above him, bright in the dark void where sky met space, energies burst into life as spontaneously as matches left in tropical sunlight. At first no more than sparks they grew stronger and hotter, fluttering around one another like newly hatched chicks in a nest. Eventually each of the sparks joined the others, coalescing into a single mass that slowly began to descend towards the world below.
If Florin had made the decision he would have waited behind the barricade. Despite the fact that the ditch was now filled with a mass of the dying and the dead, and despite the fact that most of the defensive stakes had long since been pulled down into a tangled mess of splintered wood, the bank at least remained, giving the defenders some small advantage of height.
Yes, had Florin made the decision his men would have waited for the impact of the saurus onslaught, and would have been scattered before it like autumn leaves before a winter storm.
But Florin didn’t make the decision. Orbrant did.
He waited until the saurus were near enough to spit on and then, with an animal roar of fanatical hatred, he vaulted over the palisade and charged.
The Bretonnians followed. Caught up in the invisible storm of the Sigmarite’s energy they had little choice. Perhaps it was because of the warrior priest’s savage oratory, or perhaps it was because of some other, more subtle magic. But for whatever reason in that moment, in that one, glorious moment, they became all that they had ever dreamed of being.
Battered and bruised, rotten of tooth and vicious of habit, the score of mercenaries fell upon their foes with the righteous wrath of the heroes of old. They hurled themselves against the advancing horde, meeting it with the bone-shattering impact of a fist meeting a sledgehammer’s swing.
And yet, incredibly, it was the saurus who faltered. The spirit which had possessed the Bretonnians seemed to blind them to the fact that their enemies were massive, iron-scaled, invincible.
Thus forgetful of their weakness they scythed through the first rank of lizards, their halberds and swords biting deeply through their scaled hides with a keen-edged hunger.
A dozen reptiles were felled by that first, crazed impact. A dozen more thrown back bloodied and dazed by the ferocity of the charge. Orbrant, his ragged robes flapping around him like a bloodied storm cloud, seemed to be everywhere, the silver blur of his warhammer smiting through his foes like lightning.
Now he was hammering down the bearer of the enemies’ blasphemous standard, smashing the totem in half and crushing the armoured skull of its bearer on the backstroke.
Now he was stooping to drag a man free of the saurus he’d killed, picking the mercenary up by the scruff of his neck as though he were no heavier than a pup and throwing him back into the fight.
Now he was singing a deep throated battle hymn that reverberated in the bones of all who heard it, the savage chant punctuated by the constant metronome of gromril splintering bone.
But Orbrant was only one man, and the saurus were legion. As the shock of the charge wore off they pushed forward, their strength waxing as the defenders’ waned.
Florin snatched bloody glimpses of the turning tide as he fought. Beneath the total concentration and numbing stupidity of combat he knew that he should be thinking of a plan. He ducked and parried, his wrist flaring in pain as it was bent backwards, and a snarling mouthful of curved teeth lunged for his throat.
He let himself fall back away from the attack, gripping the cold iron of his assailant’s arm and stabbing the sharpened point of his machete into its belly. His entire weight travelled through the blow, driving the steel home with a force that would have gutted a pig.
It didn’t gut the saurus. With a bellow of pain it smashed Florin to one side with the leather disc of its shield, sending him sprawling over the cooling body of one of his comrades. Stars span through his field of vision as he watched the saurus pluck the blade out of its torso and throw it to one side with a contemptuous snarl.
Before it could turn on him once more Florin snatched the eating knife from his belt and, ignoring the certainty that he should have started running, pounced forward to stab it into the joint behind the lizard’s knee. The little steel blade punched through skin and into a knot of gristle and cartilage he found there.
Florin twisted.
This time it was the saurus that fell back, and Florin followed him. Using the heavy scales that armoured the creature’s head he pulled it to one side, then plunged his knife through the serpentine eye and into the brain beneath.
The fallen lizard thrashed like a landed fish as it died, the creature’s flailing claws holding its brethren back for the second Florin needed to jump clear.
Suddenly from behind, he felt an impact on his shoulder. He turned, knife at the ready, and met Lundorf’s white smile.
“Take it,” the Marienburger told him, throwing him a sheathed sword. “Looks like you’ll be needing it!”
“Thanks,” Florin laughed, a little hysterically. “After you.”
Losing no more time in banter Lundorf winked, turned, and led his men into the Bretonnians’ line.
A moment later the Tileans appeared, pikes held at hip height as they charged into the saurus beneath a hail of dwarf fire.
It was a great effort. A heroic effort. But as all mercenaries know, heroic efforts never end well. Inch by inch and corpse by corpse, van Delft’s little army was being pushed back towards oblivion by the unstoppable weight of the jungle’s true masters.
Xinthua Tzequal lolled on the comfort of his palanquin, eyes half closed as he listened to the reports of the battle unfolding. The plan he had decided upon was working with the blunt elegance of all mindlessly simple things, yet still he derived a certain satisfaction from it. Success, after all, was success.
The skinks had first washed around the humans’ defences, wearing them away as they surged and probed, drawing them to their barriers and trapping them there like wasps in amber. Then, when they had found the weakest point, Xinthua had unleashed the saurus warriors. The combination of his delicate appreciation of space and time with the brute force of the warriors was proving to be the decisive manoeuvre.
Even now, he had just learned, the saurus were smashing their way through the mammals. Their desperation had made the warmbloods fight with a surprising courage, but it was not a trait Xinthua admired. In his world there existed only force and mass, and the purity of calculation. Everything else was a distraction.
Nor would their courage do them any good. The constant relay of skink runners all told the same story. The skinks were holding the warmbloods to their ridiculously overextended positions whilst the saurus, as wisely careless of their own expendable lives as they were of the enemy’s, ground their way through to the heart of the mammals’ position.
It was as good as over, Xinthua thought with a sigh. Lowering his eyelids further he dismissed the fighting from his mind and sent the focus of his intellect in pursuance of some newly conceived geometries that had just fluttered into his consciousness. In the clearing around him his entourage remained standing and alert, the blank perfection of their eyes searching the surrounding jungle for any sign of danger.
Another skink came up and threw itself into the dirt in front of the mage, its sides bellowing in and out in near terminal exhaustion. For a moment Xinthua considered dismissing its report until later. He had more important things to think about than pest control. It was only a sense of duty that persuaded him to turn his eyes upon the lowly messenger and gesture for it to speak.
“I bear a report, my liege,” it said, its chirruping voice uneven from its panting breath. It had obviously run here much faster than its brethren. Perhaps a stronger strain that the usual, Xinthua considered.
“Speak,” the mage said lazily.
“The humans are employing magic, my liege,” it said. “Scar-Leader Xutzpa begs that you come to bear witness.”
For a second Xinthua froze, his calculations whirling into a fresh set of combinations. He had begun to suppose that human sorcery had been either a figment of his captive’s deranged thought processes, or perhaps the subject of some anomaly. It wouldn’t be the first time that the power of the ancients had momentarily manifested itself through one of the lesser races, much as the power of the skies sometimes struck skinks with bolts of lightning.
It seemed not, though. It seemed that these primitive mammals did have some small understanding of their own.
Fascinating.
“Messenger, lead my entourage to the field of battle. I want to see this sorcery for myself. Oh, and send another runner to Scar-Leader Scythera. Tell him that it’s time to commit the final element of the attack. We will now end the battle.”
Despite the men that he’d thrown into the Bretonnian line van Delft knew that it was doomed. The ferocious lizard hordes were chewing through his forces like rats through leather, making a bright red carpet of their corpses. The Colonel could almost smell the animal instinct to flee rising off his surviving forces and, loosening his sword in its sheath, prepared to stiffen their resolve with his presence. Better to face death together than alone.
He was about to hand the last shreds of his command to Thorgrimm, a final act of responsibility before he rushed through the doors of the enemy’s fangs and into the paradise that lay beyond, when something stopped him.
Most men wouldn’t have noticed it. Between the clash of battle that roared without and the fearful pounding of their own hearts within, most men would have been incapable of noticing such a small thing. But van Delft, whose long and violent life had taught him the art of constant awareness, did.
It was his shadow that caught his eye. At first it seemed normal enough, the distorted shade having the right amount of limbs and heads. The only thing wrong was that it wasn’t the only one.
His forehead furrowed in puzzlement as he watched the second shadow flicker and grow, prowling around him as if he were a sundial in a speeded up world.
Then he heard the sound, the constant hiss of boiling moisture. Looking up in sudden alarm, half expecting to see a rain of snakes, the Colonel squinted at the star that was tumbling down from the skies above. The eye-wateringly bright mass of it was followed by a white trail of steam, the condensation marking its path across the blue sky like a snail’s trail.
“Kereveld,” the Colonel told himself, and glanced across at the wizard. His eyes were still half closed, his hands and lips still moving in incantation. The Colonel resisted the temptation to ask him what was going on. Instead he turned back to watch the comet tumbling downwards, feeling a gambler’s rush of adrenaline as it fell screaming towards the combat below.
As it dropped through the last few hundred feet the back ranks of both sides paused, craning their necks to stare up at the white hot inferno as it yawed towards first one side and then another.
A second later it impacted onto the earth. With a blinding flare of magical energy the comet punched into the ground, crushing a great swathe of figures beneath the holocaust of its own destruction and flinging their shattered bodies high into the air to rain down in a gory hail.
Xinthua Tzeqal was quite impressed. To summon a comet was a simple enough spell, true. It was also as easy to dispel as it was to pop a mudfish’s bladder. This one had been well controlled, though, landing almost entirely on the saurus warriors that beset the mammals.
Xinthua spent a moment contemplating the shattered remains of those that it had caught, unconcerned by their fate. There were still more than enough of their brethren to do the job in hand, and replacements were easily spawned.
He looked up then, the complex symmetries of his great golden eyes readjusting to peer at the tiny group of humans that stood atop the pyramid. One of them had a glow about him, an aura that identified him as a magic user.
For a moment Xinthua considered having the animal captured alive. It would be interesting to unravel the strange twists of its tiny mind, to see what scraps of anomalous knowledge lay trapped within.
But no. He had a duty to preserve his forces, and already he could feel the beginnings of another comet overhead. Leaning back in his chair he changed his focus, letting the physical world dissolve into a blur of murky colours whilst, high overhead, the winds of magic became clear and sharply defined.
With an effort the mage tore himself away from the contemplation of their beauty and began to search for the comet.
Ah, there it was. Just blossoming in the troposphere.
The mage let the second comet grow into full life and begin to descend before he reached out to take it. Gently he exerted his will on the incantation, wresting the fireball from the human’s grasp with barely a struggle.
* * *
Scar-Leader Scythera had wanted to send in Hotza at the very beginning of the battle. He had seen enough of the puny foe they faced to rest assured in his contempt for them. The first one he’d experienced had disintegrated beneath his claws as he’d torn it apart the better to sample its soft flesh. A single charge from Hotza would, he was sure, have broken open their formation as neatly as he’d broken open their bones to reveal the succulent marrow inside.
Yes, he had wanted to send in Hotza, but then Mage Priest Xinthua Tzequal had told him to wait and the wanting had stopped. Until, that was, the skink runner had brought mage’s latest order. The order that now was the time to unleash the wild strength that he had spent so long in disciplining.
Scythera’s blood began to race as he strode over to Hotza, letting the warm steam of her breath condense upon his scales. He felt it trickling down between them like morning dew as he bent to remove a tick from one of her legs. Only then did he look up to the skink handlers that waited perched on top of her and give them their orders.
With an excited chittering the lesser brethren scrambled to their positions and, with a dozen carefully placed prods, set Hotza lumbering forward. The ground trembled beneath her feet as, with slow, steady deliberation she started off.
The scar-leader and his guard followed in her wake, their going made easy by the creature’s passage. With never a pause, she smashed a path through thickets of small trees and overarching vines, trampling the undergrowth beneath the great crushing pads of her feet into a scratch built road.
Such effortless destruction, Scythera thought, and felt his mouth water with pleasure. Such careless power.
His blood pounded with anticipation as he considered what would happen when they reached the humans. With an impatient bark, he bid the skinks to move her along faster. Once more they wielded their long, sharpened poles, and this time, with a low rumble of protest, Hotza broke into a heavy, lumbering run that set the earth trembling.
The warriors had to run to keep up with her. Leaping over the smashed detritus of her passage and dodging the splintered trunks she left behind they raced along, their breathing becoming deep and heavy. They were gasping for air, when, with a final cacophony of smashed wood, Hotza broke into the clearing.
She paused as she saw the ruins, and the bloodstained ground around them. Lifting the great beak of her nose she snuffled uncertainly at the coppery tang of blood and the rich smell of scorched flesh that hung in the humid air. The scar-leader, panting after the sprint through the jungle, came to stand beside her.
He too sniffed the air, letting the glorious smells of battle soak through his sinuses as he watched the confusion of violence which was unfolding before him.
They had emerged on the eastern side of the clearing, as arranged. The nearest group of humans was hidden from them by a swarm of bloodied and battered skinks. Meanwhile, to the right of the minor temple which marked the end of that flank, he could see his brother saurus grinding forward in a single great phalanx, its ranks snaking away towards a distant tree-line.
It was a glorious sight, despite the fact that so many of them had been torn into steaming corpses by some foul magic.
The scar-leader, every synapse humming with the pleasure of instinct satisfied, prepared to hurl Hotza into the battle. He’d use her unstoppable strength to smash through the eastern side of the humans’ pitiful defences and then, cutting up like a knife beneath a ribcage, he’d throw her into the back of the remainder who were still struggling with his brethren.
Hotza shifted uneasily beside him, and it was easy for the scar-leader to confuse her unease with anticipation. It goaded him into action and, with a last admiring glance at her huge, armoured bulk, he stood back and gave her skink riders the order to charge.
At first she seemed hesitant, but the skinks had trained her well. With a series of carefully timed jabs and pokes with their herding sticks they squared her up to the battle line and, with a final jab at her rear, sent her rumbling forward. The ground shaking beneath her feet she lowered the three great horns that sprouted from the armoured plate of her head and bellowed miserably.
“Damn,” Kereveld said, his voice low with disappointment. Van Delft, who was watching the mountainous beast that had just burst out of the jungle, admired his understatement.
“Damn indeed,” he said, looking at the monster. Bigger than his town house back in Marienburg, and as well armoured as a steam tank, it came lumbering towards them with a series of bloodcurdling howls and roars that sounded incongruously fearful.
What could such a beast have to fear? Certainly not them. The great armoured plate that covered its lowered skull bore three great tusks, each as sharp as a stake and as long as a man. It had a sharp-looking beak of a muzzle as well, a great jagged mantrap of bone that snapped threateningly open and closed as the beast drew nearer. It was more than a match for any man.
Nay, van Delft corrected himself. Not any man. Any regiment.
No wonder the skinks scattered at its approach, abandoning their attack to turn and flee despite the vengeful blades of the Marienburgers. No wonder either that the Marienburgers, when they saw the avalanche of armoured rage that was bearing down on them, fled in turn, dropping helmets and weapons in their panic.
“Damn,” Kereveld said again as the monster crashed through the remnants of the eastern barricade. Van Delft, an anaesthetising wave of euphoria washing through him now that he knew that the end was drawing near, turned and looked at the wizard. He was sitting on the stonework of the pyramid, pale and shaking beneath a sheen of sweat, with his thumbs pressed into his temples.
“Cheer up, old man,” van Delft told him with a wild grin. “Sigmar loves those who die against a mighty foe.”
He waved towards the stampeding tonnage of the reptile below them. It staggered from side to side, trampling fleeing Marienburgers underfoot even as its handlers drove it towards the back of the Bretonnian line.
But Kereveld wasn’t looking down. He was looking up.
Van Delft followed his gaze as the comet filled the sky above.
It was the last thing he saw. The white hot intensity of the falling star was enough to melt his irises, fusing flesh to bone in a smeared deathmask. Mercifully the heat boiled his brains as it tortured his flesh, blotting out any pain he might have felt before it annihilated him completely.
Hotza was of a breed that disliked blood even more than it disliked noise. Or pain. Or anything, in fact apart from wallowing in cool mud and eating. The sharp beak of her mouth wasn’t designed to crunch bodies, it was designed to crunch through roots. Nor were the three curving horns that jutted from the thickness of her skull meant for anything more than protection.
But what nature had created, the lizardmen had tried to perfect. Hotza had been trained from the egg to associate tasty fibres and roots with the scent of blood and the noise of war gongs. She’d also been trained to obey the goads of her skink masters, the tiny controllers that swarmed across her back like fleas on a boar.
The training had been a terrible experience for a young stegadon, a nightmare of fire and pain and sudden, savage nips. The memory of it had sunk into her tiny mind like diamonds through mud so that now, when she felt the lightest prod from one of the skinks’ goads, she responded, drawn by the chains of conditioning that were stronger than iron.
Yes, the lizardmen had spent long, patient years turning her into the great war beast that was now smashing through their enemy’s line. And every second of her training had been done with a single aim in mind—the subjugation of instinct to discipline.
It had been an enormous effort.
And, in one second of blinding light, it was gone, the countless hours of training vanished beneath a floodtide of terrified instinct. As the comet struck the top of the temple, blinding her and filling her nose with the scent of unnatural death, Hotza went berserk.
The skinks clung to her as, bellowing in terror, she stampeded away from the sorcerous fire, charging through the scattering Bretonnians and into the tightly packed saurus warriors that now stood between her and the jungle.
They stood in ranks, packed too tightly to flee or even to dodge as she trampled over them. Her pounding feet crushed their armoured skulls as easily as snail shells, splintered their bones, and pressed their broken bodies deep into the graves of her footprints.
One of the skinks jabbed at her desperately, aiming for a pressure point beneath the plate of her helmet. It missed, piercing the wrong nerve ganglion with the needle point of its goad. Hotza screamed in agony and raced forward through the remainder of the saurus warriors, brushing their bodies aside like elephant grass and fleeing for the shaded sanctuary of the jungle.
Xinthua Tzequal had enjoyed wresting the human’s incantation from his feeble grasp. It had been an act of simple artistry which he had found deeply satisfying, so much so that he was committing every detail to memory, closing his heavy eyelids to replay the event before it faded.
It wasn’t until he opened them again that he realised that something was happening on the battlefield.
At first he assumed that it was the final victory. It had been only a matter of time before the mammals’ frail defences had cracked like an eggshell between his teeth. Then he looked again, and all thoughts of elegant victory slipped from his mind. Even as he watched, the rampaging monstrosity of Scythera’s stegadon smashed its way through to the rear of the saurus warriors, rolling over them in an avalanche of scale and bone and sheer, unstoppable power.
Xinthua blinked uneasily as the monster broke through the final rank of saurus. Trampling the last of them underfoot it let out a rumbling, bone-shaking roar and fled towards the tree-line.
Towards Xinthua Tzequal himself.
The mage priest calculated what the result of the maddened creature’s trajectory would be and blinked again.
“Bearers,” he decided as Hotza’s approaching silhouette grew against the sky. “Run away.”
They didn’t need to be told twice. Before the last syllable had left their master’s mouth they had turned and raced into the jungle, desperately weaving amongst the tree stumps as Hotza smashed into the undergrowth behind them.
Xinthua Tzeqal’s messenger skinks fled too, scurrying off to every corner of the battlefield with their master’s last order.
Within minutes, every lizardman that could had left the clearing. Not long after that the first of the vultures that had been circling overhead descended, ready to start their feast.
As the mage priest had predicted, the battle had lasted for no more than an hour.