[Empire Army 03] - Call to Arms Read online

  Dieter had barely had time to become acquainted with many of his comrades, but already he had seen several of them die. Breitmeyer, one of the men of his file, had been killed at an early stage of the battle, gored by a boar tusk when a section of the shield wall had briefly given way during an enemy charge. Impaled on the tusk, Breitmeyer had been thrown in the air when the boar tossed its head up. He had landed disembowelled, dying in the stink of his own shit and blood as his intestines unspooled from his belly like a tangled coil of rope suddenly cut in two.

  Rosen, another man from the file, had died later. By then, Dieter had lost count of how many times the orcs had attacked. Rosen, it seemed to him, had suffered an unlucky death. There was no glamour to it, no glory. Moved by fury at his riders’ inability to break the Hochlanders’ line, one of the orc chieftains had thrown his horned helmet into the human ranks in a gesture of pique. The helmet had hit the shield rim of the man in front of Rosen and tumbled end over end through the air, the sharp point of one of its horns transfixing the unlucky Rosen through the eye as he looked up to see where the helmet would land. Appalled, Rosen’s comrades had rushed him to the surgeons, but there was nothing to be done. Rosen had suffered a mortal wound and, with it, the sad ignominy of a ridiculous death.

  Alongside Breitmeyer and Rosen, at least another dozen or more Scarlets had died, not counting the men who had been wounded too badly to continue and had been evacuated for treatment in the surgeon’s tents at the centre of the encampment. Even at that cost, Dieter realised the regiment had been lucky. They had held the line, as had the other units guarding the perimeter, meaning they had suffered their losses in piecemeal fashion. If ever the line broke, the effects would be catastrophic: the current trickle of casualties might well become a torrent.

  “Stand down!” Sergeant Bohlen’s voice called out as the latest orc attack faded. Glowering after the enemy as they turned their mounts and retreated once more to the safety of the tree line, Bohlen barked out a familiar series of commands.

  “First rank, retire! Get any wounded men back to the surgeons! The rest of you step forward! Gerhardt, you and your men are on mercy duty. Look lively, the lot of you! You needn’t worry you’ll have time to be bored. The orcs will be back soon enough!”

  Following the sergeant’s orders, the men of the regiment rearranged themselves accordingly. The men who had borne the brunt of the orcs’ latest assault pulled back to the rear of the regiment, taking their wounded comrades with them. From there they would be allowed to rest briefly in relative safety, rebuilding their strength before taking up their new position as the rear rank of the regiment. In the meantime, the men of the second rank had taken their place, while the third rank stepped up, ready to move forward in turn and face the enemy when it came their time to do so. War as an infantryman, Dieter was learning, combined the varied aspects of a procession and a slaughterhouse.

  “And so it goes on,” Hoist chuckled darkly. “You’d think the damned greenskins would’ve learned their lesson by now. Sigmar knows, we must have killed ten of them for every man we’ve lost. But that’s the way with orcs. They never seem to know when they are beaten.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Rieger warned him. “It could be the orcs know something that we don’t. Either way, it doesn’t do to get too cocky.”

  “You are a cheery soul as ever, I see,” Hoist rolled his eyes in sarcasm. “I’m glad to see all this fighting hasn’t dented your eternal optimism.” He glanced toward Dieter. “You have to be wary of this one, young blood. Rieger has a tendency to always look on the dark side of everything. If you hand him a refreshing cup of spring water, he’s bound to ask you how many men have pissed in it upstream before you got there. He’s the kind of man who can never see the silver lining for the black cloud around it.”

  “It is a matter of perception,” Rieger replied. “I see it differently. In my opinion, I am a realist and you are an oaf.”

  Dieter had not known the two men long, but he suspected Hoist and Rieger’s mock quarrel was as much a method of distracting their minds from the task at hand rather than any real disagreement. In accordance with Sergeant Bohlen’s orders, they had followed Gerhardt and the other men of their file as they advanced out into the no-man’s-land in front of the Scarlets’ shield wall. It was now their turn to perform an unpleasant task in the short period of grace before the greenskins attacked again.

  They called it “mercy duty”. Having refused to hide anything of the grim nature of the soldier’s life from Dieter when he was growing up, Helmut Schau had described the procedure to him on several occasions.

  “When you put an enemy to flight, he doesn’t usually have time to go collecting up his wounded—even if he has a mind to,” Helmut had told him. “Most of them get left on the battlefield. Now, when you’re fighting civilised men, it’s not too much of a problem. You leave those with mortal wounds to die, and the rest become your prisoners. But, when you’re fighting orcs, or beastmen, or marauders, matters are different. Wounded or not, they’ll cut your throat given the chance, and neither side takes prisoners. So you finish them. In the lull between attacks, you send out men on mercy duty. They don’t mess around trying to sort the wounded from the dead. They just take a weapon and stick each body in the head or heart, to make sure the job’s done right.”

  Following the example of the other men around him, Dieter performed his allotted task. The area immediately in front of the Scarlets’ position was littered with the bodies of orcs and boars. Here and there, a fallen orc still had enough life to pose an obvious threat. Roaring when it sensed the soldiers’ presence, the creature tried to raise itself to attack, only to be chopped down by Dieter and his comrades.

  Otherwise, the work was easy. Dieter might have expected it to be more harrowing, but the long drawn-out struggle of the battle had begun to inure him to slaughter. He had been killing orcs all day. The fact he was now ordered to turn his attention to slaying those too wounded or helpless to presently harm him did not seem to make much difference. They were orcs. It was a good enough reason to kill them.

  Dieter was wiping sticky gore from his sword and about to advance on the next orc body, when he heard a warning cry behind him.

  “Back to the lines!” It was Gerhardt, shouting out a warning. “Get back to our lines and make it fast. The orcs are coming.”

  Having regrouped their forces, the orcs appeared at the tree line as they made preparations for another charge. Even as he hurried back to safety with his comrades behind the Scarlets’ shield wall, Dieter noticed a difference in the nature of their enemy.

  This time, in place of boar riders, the orcs massing at the tree line were all on foot. They seemed larger than the orcs Dieter had seen before. They were taller, more broadly built, their bodies pitted with scars while their green skin was darker in hue.

  “And now the battle really begins,” Gerhardt said. Seeing Dieter look at him in confusion, he explained. “Those orcs you can see over there are the greenskins’ veterans. It’s said that orcs are like snakes or lizards: they never stop growing. As they grow older, they get bigger, stronger, tougher. The orc warlord must have decided his boar riders were never going to break our line. So, now he’s sending his best troops against us.”

  He smiled.

  “You needn’t look so worried, Dieter Lanz. This is good news.”

  “Good news?” Dieter looked doubtfully toward the gathering mass of the enemy. “Are you sure of that?”

  “Very sure,” Gerhardt nodded. “It means we are winning the battle. Now, all we have to do is kill the orc veterans and it will all be over.”

  Out by the tree line, the enemy preparations were complete. A particularly large and battle-scarred orc pushed his way to the head of his fellows and bellowed a guttural commandment. The orcs broke into a run and charged towards the Hochlander line.

  It seemed remarkable to Dieter, but there seemed to be a greater impact from the charge of the orc veterans on foot than there
had been from the orc cavalry riding boars. Dieter and the other men of his file were stationed six ranks back, but even in their withdrawn position he felt the shiver that ran through the shield wall as the orcs charged into it.

  Within seconds, Dieter found himself face-to-face with the enemy. The Scarlets’ front rank buckled, unable to bear the strain of the veterans’ charge. Unable to resist it any further, the second and third ranks quickly followed suit. Where once there had been disciplined, implacable ranks of human soldiers facing a brutish enemy, the situation quickly degenerated into an open melee. Equally swiftly, the Scarlets’ small corner of the battlefield dissolved into a confused disorder in which any pretension to military formation was lost. In place of order, there was barbarism. Orcs and men mingled and killed each other with abandon.

  The line was breaking. That panicked thought leapt into Dieter’s head as an enormous, scarred orc loomed up before him. Ducking underneath the swipe of the creature’s axe, he thrust his sword up into the orc’s chin, the blade stabbing through the soft portion behind the line of the jaw and burying itself in the monster’s brain.

  Pulling his sword free with an effort as the orc fell, Dieter hurried to help an unknown Scarlet defend himself against another orc. In the wake of the veterans’ charge, everything was confusion. At times, he found himself fighting side by side with Gerhardt, Rieger, Hoist, even Krug, the tides of battle throwing men together like flotsam washed ashore on a beach.

  The situation was so desperate, Dieter had no idea who was winning. Similarly, he was blind to the progress of the wider battle around him and his comrades. His war had become one of simple survival.

  He could not swear to it, but he had the feeling the Scarlets were holding their own. The shield wall had broken, but the regiment had not crumbled with that reverse. They had held their position, willing to fight to the last man to prevent the orcs from gaining any more ground. Caught in the thick of the conflict, Dieter hoped it would not come to that.

  Then, suddenly, just as it seemed the pressure of the orc attack was irresistible, the Scarlets’ fortunes took a turn for the better. Dieter heard a great commotion come from his left: a cacophony of Hochlander battle cries and shouted voices raised in the praise of Sigmar. With unexpected suddenness, the orc advance began to ebb as the enemy came under attack from their flank.

  For long seconds, Dieter had no clear idea what was going on. He heard orcs scream out in pain. He smelled the stench of burning flesh. The ranks of bestial orcs in front of him abruptly turned and ran, their threat evaporating like early morning dew in the face of the rising sun. Dieter stood uncertainly, watching with his mouth opened as he wondered what could have possibly put the enemy to flight. Then, he saw them.

  A warrior priest of Sigmar strode across the battlefield with a hammer in each hand. He was clad in burnished plate mail, his armour shining with a shimmering golden light as though some heavenly power had set its sign upon him.

  Evidently, the priest had taken it upon himself to lead a counter-attack. He moved at the head of a rag-tag band of warriors. Dieter saw free company men, halberdiers, swordsmen, spearmen, flagellants, even cooks and ostlers, all following the priest’s lead.

  More remarkably still, a wizard walked beside them. It was clear he was a member of the Golden Order. He wore gold-coloured robes covered in runic inscriptions, while he had long strands of gold and silver wire woven into his long beard and hair. With a gesture here, an enchantment there, the wizard unleashed carnage on the enemy, releasing sprays of acid and showers of molten metal from his open palms and directing them at the orc horde.

  Together, the priest, the wizard and their followers tore into the greenskins. Heartened by their display, the Scarlets and the other units around them redoubled their efforts. With all thoughts of strategy and tactics forgotten, they gave chase to the fleeing orcs.

  For a moment, it seemed victory was near. It was clear the enemy morale was crumbling. The orc veterans had been forced to flee. Soon, the rest of the greenskin army would likely follow their example.

  Emboldened by the sight of the enemy in disarray, Dieter raced to be at the head of his regiment as they gave chase to the greenskins. After all the hardships and terrors of the battle and the day so far, he wanted nothing more than to have vengeance for the comrades he had lost, for the innocents the orcs had slaughtered, for all the terrible things the enemy would do to the province of Hochland and its people if they were not stopped.

  In that instant, it seemed to him the war was won. Human arms had been victorious. The orcs were beaten. They were broken, running. There could be no coming back for them.

  In another instant, everything changed and he learned how wrong he was.

  In their eagerness to get to grips with the enemy, the warrior priest and his followers had moved far in advance of the rest of the army. Supported by the wizard’s magic, they were almost at the tree line. Dieter was still some distance behind them, but he could see a new force of orcs had emerged from the trees to try and stem the greenskin retreat. At their head was the most horrifying creature Dieter had ever seen, more terrible even than the beastmen he had fought the day before.

  It was a troll, he was sure of that at least. It stood twice as tall as any of the orcs around it, its blue-grey hide covered in a profusion of warty, rock-like lumps. It moved with an odd, rolling gait as though its limbs were not quite shaped for smooth locomotion.

  Despite the weirdness of its gait the troll moved forward swiftly, easily outdistancing its orcish companions in its eagerness to close with the onrushing human host.

  Spotting the threat at once, the wizard responded. Chanting a terse incantation, he extended an arm and pointed his palm at the troll. A stream of fiery liquid metal materialised and shot from his hand, only to dissipate as it made contact with the creature’s stonelike skin.

  Mouth widening to show an awful row of sharp teeth, the troll changed direction and charged toward the wizard. Refusing to flee, the mage unleashed another enchantment and sent a globule of molten metal flying toward the troll. It had no more effect than the previous spell: the metal seemed to disappear even as it struck the troll, as though by some strange quirk its skin had an ability to nullify magic that was more than the equal of the wizard’s ability to cast it.

  Seeing his doom striding towards him the wizard tried another spell, but it was too late. The troll closed in on him and tore the man’s head from his shoulders, bathing its face in the geyser of blood that erupted from the wizard’s sundered neck as he was decapitated.

  In the meantime, the warrior priest had met his own doom. Turning to face the newly-arrived force of orcs as they charged forward, he was overwhelmed as a swarm of much smaller greenskins emerged from among the trees and caught him unawares. There were dozens of the creatures, each no higher than a man’s thigh, armed with an array of sharpened sticks and flint knives as though they had equipped themselves by copying the example of their larger, orc cousins.

  Dieter had heard that large groups of such diminutive creatures, called snotlings by men, often accompanied greenskin armies when they went to war. From Helmut Schau’s description of them he had expected them to be quite comical beings, but there was nothing funny in the way they set upon the warrior priest. As he struggled to shake them off, some of the snotlings leapt to hang from his armour while their fellows grabbed at his legs. Dieter’s last sight of the brave priest was as he fell to the ground. The snotlings swiftly covered him, their crude weapons quickly becoming stained with blood as they took advantage of the gaps in his armour.

  With the fall of the priest, the Hochlanders’ counterattack faltered. Bereft of their leader, the priest’s followers seemed to lose their nerve even as the new hordes of orcs arriving from the forest smashed into them.

  Within seconds, prayers and triumphant battle cries were replaced by the sounds of panic. Fleeing as the orc veterans had done only a few minutes earlier, the dead priest’s followers now turned to run b
lindly away from the enemy, crashing headlong into the other Hochlander units moving in support behind them. With a swiftness that Dieter would have barely believed possible, the Hochlanders’ charge turned into chaos. All pretension to order or discipline was lost as the battle briefly dissolved into a thousand separate conflicts of orc against man, or man against snotling, or goblin against man.

  The army had lost all cohesion. Appalled, Dieter realised the Hochlanders were now engaging the greenskins on their own level; not as cogs in a smoothly functioning military machine, but as individual warriors meeting brawn with brawn, hate with hate, and savagery with savagery. In such a battle, they could not help but lose. Once the battle became a contest of strength of limb rather than discipline and strength of mind, the orcs held the advantage. Unless someone was able to rescue the situation quickly, all would be lost.

  But there was no rescue. Even as Dieter heard the sound of sergeants and officers calling out commands and trying to restore discipline, he became aware that the confusion in the ranks of the army around was growing steadily worse.

  At first, he was uncertain as to its cause. Then, he realised the same panic that had gripped the dead priest’s former followers had spread to encompass the troops immediately behind Dieter and the Scarlets. Just as the priest’s followers had turned and run blindly into the forces following behind them, now the troops behind the Scarlets had suddenly begun to run through the Scarlets’ ranks with the same heedless abandon.

  Dieter was confused at first, until he saw a glimpse of goblin wolf riders moving behind the rearward units that were fleeing towards the Scarlets. As cries of alarm spread through the army and the musicians began to sound the retreat, Dieter came to a horrifying conclusion.

  Somehow, the enemy had managed to flank the Hochlander troops guarding the western approaches and get behind them.