[Empire Army 04] - Grimblades Read online

  A WARHAMMER NOVEL

  GRIMBLADES

  Empire Army - 04

  Nick Kyme

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  For Kev Platts and Wednesday mornings

  listening to Jethro Tull’s “Broadsword”.

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  PROLOGUE

  Iron Gate, dwarf-held bastion of Black Fire Pass,

  690 miles from Altdorf

  They came from the east. The green tide that swept across the Worlds Edge Mountains went through its southern causeways with the pounding of drums and the call of beasts. They burned and sacked as they went. The sky blackened with the smoke of their charnel fires. Horns and bestial roars announced them. Tribes upon tribes heard the call to arms: the Waaagh! One by one the orcs and goblins emerged from their caves, bringing cleavers and spears and a brute desire to kill. This was the greenskin way, and with each fresh warband the horde swelled and its belligerence grew.

  Black Fire Pass—the name was legendary. Orcs had come here before, and would again. Over two thousand years ago, they fought the nascent man-god and were defeated. Now, a goblin led them. An apparent lesser cousin of the orc was the goblin, but not this beast. This beast was different. It was driven. It was ruthless. It was deadly. And neither dwarf nor man who guarded the gates of this ancestral battleground would oppose it.

  “Name the dead!” King Bragarik boomed above the battle. He could barely think, such was the thunder coming from the orc drums. His skull throbbed with it, and their debased chanting.

  “Thord Helhand, slain by an urk’s blade; Norgan Stonefinger, crushed under a grobi chariot; Baldin Grittooth, bard of the halls, eaten by a troll…” The dwarf king’s grudgemaster reeled off the names of the fallen as if he were inventorying weapons from the hold’s armouries.

  There was no time for remorse, or for grief. Dwarfs were pragmatic, especially about death. Retribution was all that mattered, and a levelling of the scales made in blood.

  Life was balance. A death for a death. Blood for blood. The grudgekeeper’s way.

  Grudgemaster Drengk scribed perfunctorily, in the same manner as his declarations. There might be no time later. If he died, who then would remember the fallen? Who then would scribe his name in the book? The “book” was a massive, hide-bound tome which hung around his neck as heavy as a millstone. But dwarfs were stout and strong: they worked and lived underground, digging, mining, hauling rock and ore. Drengk wore his discomfort, as all dwarfs did, with a stoic scowl.

  In front of king and grudgemaster were Iron Gate’s hearthguard, its hammerers. These redoubtable warriors were the king’s own and they stood in file with shields locked. Hammers rose and fell like pistons and oaths were hurled like spears into the greenskin hordes trying to punch through them. King Bragarik was at their centre, his grudgemaster just behind him.

  The hammerers’ gromril armour was dented and stained from hard fighting. Each suit was an heirloom, worth as much as a human town. More than one hammerer had lost his battle helm. Dark, hateful eyes were revealed underneath, where before they’d been occluded by a mass of beard and metal. The elite of the dwarf hold brought low by cleavers and clubs.

  King Bragarik hadn’t escaped without injury. His mail gorget was split and the links spilled down his armoured chest. A cut just above his brow drooled blood, gumming his left eye and making it dark and rheumy. Bragarik had discarded his own shield. A troll’s mace had shattered it. The beast was destroyed—the dwarf king had burned it with his rune axe—but so too was his shield.

  Even Loki and Kazum, his bearers, laboured underneath him with injuries. A long hard fight. One the dwarfs were losing.

  For a moment, the line bowed as a renewed thrust came from the rear of the orcs and rippled forward to the fighting ranks. A hammerer screamed and fell with a black haft protruding from his neck, only to be lost from view in a red haze.

  “Close ranks,” bellowed the king. A blaring warhorn answered above the rumble of drums. Blood laced his gilded gromril armour, painting its runes black as he severed an orc’s neck. He crushed the skull of another with his gauntleted fist. Below him, his shieldbearers hacked furiously with their axes.

  When the killing abated for a moment and the line was strong once more, King Bragarik scowled back at Drengk.

  “Godrin Stoutbellow,” the grudgemaster concluded, “killed by an urk spear.”

  “Let it be known,” proclaimed the king, “that on this day they did fall and were revenged.” His eye traced the line of battle, too long and too thin for his liking, strung out across the width of Black Fire Pass, its valley sides teeming with greenskins. Bragarik saw his hammerers, a cliff of gromril breakers against a green and turbulent tide. To their right were the “Venerable”, silver-haired long-beards that had lived for centuries but whose place by the eternal hearth was calling. Most were older than the king, and twice as cantankerous. Every one of their dead was not only the loss of a dwarf, but an end to a piece of living history. The warrior clans followed them: metalsmiths, fletchers, candlemakers and rockshapers all—the craftsdwarfs of the hold arrayed in battle and fighting alongside their brothers.

  Quarrellers regimented upon a shallow mound filled the air with shafts from their crossbows, exacting a heavy toll. Thunderers boomed just below, between their volleys, spewing smoke and fire. More greenskins fell to their fusillades too, but it wasn’t enough; not nearly enough.

  Rodi Coalthumb’s miners were overrun. Bragarik saw the thane laying his oathstone as he prepared a final stand.

  Drongi’s rangers had long been lost to the greenskin swell, swept up like sticks before a rushing river.

  The king’s own son, Orig, lay on a bier of shields in a cold room, silently reposed. It had been a bitter blow.

  Yes, only retribution was left to the dwarfs now as Black Fire Pass filled with orcs and goblins, just as it had done in recent years when man and dwarf first stood together.

  “Is there sign of—”

  A blast of cannons behind him smothered even Bragarik’s imposing voice.

  “Their chieftain,” he tried again. “Is there sign of him?”

  Skane, the hold’s banner bearer, was standing on top of a small hillock and gazed across the field beyond the rolling gun smoke.

  “I see him, thane-king.” He pointed to the east, his grubby finger encrusted with rings.

  Bragarik’s eyes narrowed when he saw the Paunch.

  The bloated goblin king spewed curses with every breath a
s he hacked and hewed with a double-bladed axe.

  Bragarik hawked and spat, before despatching another orc with his rune axe. He’d dearly love to vent his wrath on the fat goblin swine.

  A shadow crept across a lightning cracked sky. Fell voices churned the air, deep and animalistic—the Paunch’s shaman was abroad.

  The voice of Hungni, runesmith of the hold, rose up to challenge it. Orcish sorcery met dwarf tenacity and the heavens burned with green fire.

  Emboldened by their shaman’s magic, the greenskins pushed and the dwarfs gave. Just one step, but Bragarik felt it all the way down the line as his shieldbearers retreated.

  “At this rate, the walls of Iron Gate will be at our backs,” snapped the king, to no one in particular. “And then there would be no more ground to give. He turned again to Skane. To the north, does he come?”

  The hammerer line rippled with another greenskin assault, bringing shouts, death cries and more naming of the dead from Drengk.

  Rodi Coalthumb was gone. Laments from slayers weighted the air, doleful and fatalistic.

  Skane shielded his eyes against a pellucid light above that was far from natural. Hungni was losing to the shaman. The beat of a wyvern’s wings was drawing nearer…

  Unmoving as a rock, Skane did not waver. He looked northward. A speck was growing there, like a piece of grit at first. It became larger as a grim wind began to build. The edges of Skane’s cloth banner shivered.

  The dwarf line withdrew another step. “Skane!”

  The banner bearer let his hand fall. “He comes, my king! He comes!”

  Cresting the mountain crags around Iron Gate, a figure ran slowly but steadily towards the king. The dwarf’s cheeks were puffed, his armour split. A cudgel blow dented his helm.

  Six messengers the king had sent and only one returned. He had a scroll tucked in his belt. Bragarik’s eyes were keen and he saw a wax seal upon it, wearing the Imperial crest of Emperor Dieter IV.

  “Let him through!” he bellowed. More horns conveyed the order, and the dwarf rearguards parted like a metal sea to admit the messenger.

  As the dwarf approached, he was still catching his breath. Bragarik’s attention was half elsewhere, looking askance at the eastern flank crumbling as a force of orc boar riders rolled over it.

  Drengk’s voice was hoarse by now. It vied with the heavy report of drums and the shouts of thanes as they fought to shore up the broken flank.

  Heavily-armoured ironbreakers were already moving in to intercede against the boar’s riders and they planted their banner firmly.

  “Speak quickly,” snapped the king.

  The messenger proffered the scroll to him.

  Leaning down to snatch it from the messenger’s grip, Bragarik split the seal, unfurled it and read swiftly. Hope faded as vitriol clouded the king’s granite features. He crushed the scroll in his fist and let it fall.

  The king looked at Skane. “Signal the retreat.”

  “Thane-king?”

  Bragarik’s beard quivered with rage, setting the torcs and ingots bound there jangling. “Do as you’re bidden!”

  He turned back towards the line and looked over the wall of hammerer shields defending him.

  “The day is lost…” he growled to himself, and then in a smaller, hate-filled voice. “Old oaths are sundered.”

  Skane raised the hold banner and gave the signal to retreat. All across the killing field, horns sounded and drums crashed. The line narrowed, its long haft becoming a hammer’s head as the stoutest dwarf armour put itself between its retreating brothers and the greenskins. They withdrew by steps, slow and reluctant. King Bragarik was amongst the last to leave.

  Bodies of dead dwarfs were revealed in their wake amidst a mire of broken blades and shattered hafts. Snapped shields stuck out of red-rimed earth like partly excised teeth. Fallen battle helms served as paltry grave-markers. Greenskins littered the field, too, together with the carcasses of slain beasts. Already, they had begun to stink and a pall of decay hung over the air.

  Bragarik’s nose rankled as he surveyed the dead.

  Drengk had lost his voice and scribed silently in his tome of remembering, the hold’s book of grudges, its dammaz kron, where all the ills done to its many clans were recorded.

  Bragarik wagered that several dark chapters would be writ by the grudgemaster’s hand before the day was out.

  Bitterly, the dwarfs left the field of battle. Their hammerers and ironbreakers guarded the retreat, but the greenskins did not pursue. The Paunch had not come here to taste dwarf flesh, nor did he want to fight a siege against an intractable foe. As the dwarfs fell back, so too did the way into the lands beyond the pass open. Here was the Empire, the heartlands of the greatest realm of men.

  Iron Gate shut its hold tight with a forbidding clang and as the last of King Bragarik’s warriors came to stand with their brothers, darkness reigned in the outer hall.

  “Keep ’em doused,” the dwarf king snapped at his lamplighters. They could see well enough without light.

  “Think of brothers lost,” he said, his voice sounding louder in the gloom. “Remember the dead. And remember aid asked for but not given. Men have no honour this day. They break old pacts sworn by High King Kurgan. They bring dishonour to his name too.” King Bragarik was breathing hard and fast, his anger only just contained. “Let the grobi go, and the urk and the troll. No rangers will oppose them, no watchtowers will warn of their approach. Umgi-men are alone in this,” he swore in a voice that held enough canker to scour iron. “Let them look to themselves against the greenskins. For the dawi will not come. We will not come.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  ROUSTING IN REIKWALD FOREST

  Reikland border, domain of Prince Wilhelm III,

  185 miles from Altdorf

  Crouched in the lee of a gnarled oak, Eber adjusted his sallet helm for the fifth time. Unlike the rest of his Reikland uniform, it was too big. It kept slipping over his eyes and obscuring his view of the shadowed boughs of the Reikwald. His grey-white tunic and red-slitted hose stretched to contain his bulk, but the buttonholes still gaped with the tension from his muscles.

  Eber was his family name. His first name was Brutan, given to him by his father. A cruel joke as it turned out. Even as a boy, it summed up his intimidating physique. “Dumb ox”, “clumsy oaf” and “fat brute” were some of the less flattering appellations his father had also chosen when the mood took him or when he had no more coin to stay in the tavern.

  Those nights were the worst for Brutan and his waiflike mother. Violent, drunken, red nights; they were filled with accusation, ridicule and resentment. Brutan was tough, like a slab of butcher’s meat, and his father had turned to his frailer wife when he’d been frustrated at the tenderiser’s block. Brutan still remembered her pleas, her screams. Sometimes they went on into the night even now, years later. Brutan had clenched his thick, ham-like fists, but had done nothing. By the time he grew out of adolescence he was twice his father’s size, but years of indoctrinated fear had left him scared of the man. Not a father; more a monster, like those he hunted in the forest at this very moment.

  No, Brutan had lacked the courage to act then. Instead he had simply balled his fists impotently by his sides and stared at his feet, his large, ungainly feet, and done nothing.

  “Hsst!”

  The sound came from Eber’s left and broke his unhappy reverie. “Eber, advance!”

  It was old Varveiter, glaring at Eber out of his good eye, giving him his parchment-cracked voice. The other eye was misted over with cataracts, but old Varveiter often claimed that he’d lost the sight in it fighting orcs in the Middle Mountains.

  The veteran soldier had seen greener years. His beard was wiry and thin, with more grey in it than brown. The leather hauberk he wore under his plate cuirass was a similar texture to his skin, only not as cured, and black instead of tan. But he was strong and held his halberd haft with a soldier’s purpose.

  Varveiter nodded ahead as
the line began to move: Eber, Rechts, Lenkmann and Varveiter with Sergeant Karlich at the centre keeping them spread out and steady. Masbrecht and Keller ranged on the extreme left and right, each guarding a flank.

  About fifty feet ahead were the scouts, Volker and Brand, their advance low and silent. Heinrich Volker had a hunter’s gait, a trapper’s poise. He went without a helmet and his short, black hair was bound with a band of crimson cloth. He led the way towards the beastman encampment. Whilst scouting, Volker eschewed his halberd for a long dirk. Markus Brand was no poacher, but he moved with silent menace. He wore a tan leather cap with a short, protruding feather over his helmet. A long vambrace up his left arm supported three small knives. Brand was a killer, a quiet man but with violent urges that he sated on the battlefield. He too carried a long dagger, but its blade was serrated and the metal dark from use.

  Together, they were the front rankers of the Reikland 16th Halberdiers, also known as the Grimblades. The rest of the forty-strong regiment waited several hundred feet back in a partial clearing. Surprise, according to Sergeant Karlich, was best effected in smaller numbers.

  The foul stench that had polluted the shallow breeze wafting through the forest for the last hour abruptly intensified and Volker raised a hand for the halberdiers to stop.

  Karlich didn’t need to relay the order to his men. A low clanking of metal breastplates and tassets sounded in response to Volker’s warning. It lasted just a few seconds as each man in the rank became still and watchful.

  Hunched silhouettes cavorted in the gloom ahead. Karlich saw the suggestion of horned heads and shaggy-hided bodies in those shapes that parodied men. Hooting and braying carried on the charged silence around the Grimblades. Wood smoke and something else… burning meat, supplemented the rank odour of the beastmen. Somewhere in the Reikwald depths a fire cracked. There were no animals here, no deer, no birds. Beastmen were unnatural creatures, their very presence was repellent to the native denizens of the forest.