[Angelika Fleischer 02] - Sacred Flesh Read online

  A WARHAMMER NOVEL

  SACRED FLESH

  Angelika Fleischer - 02

  Robin D. Laws

  (A Flandrel & Undead Scan v1.0)

  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 World’s 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 near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The orc’s lance, its head jagged and rusty, ripped through the man’s golden-breasted tunic, searching for his kidneys. It found the gap between the front and back plates of his cuirass. Grunting in surprise and alarm, the man stepped back, hoping to slip free. The orc twisted the weapon, digging the toothy notches of his spearhead into his victim’s flesh. The man groaned; his left ankle twisted beneath him. The orc withdrew the spear, now freshly crimsoned.

  Exertion had reddened the flesh of the man’s face. Middle age had taken its toll on him: the beginnings of a double chin hung from his once-handsome jawline. His grey hair was flattened to his temples with sweat. A bony brow hooded his dark and intelligent eyes. His outfit, now marked with dark Blackfire soil and a spreading patch of his own blood, proclaimed his identity as a former officer in the army of Nuln. The breast of his sleeveless over-tunic was the colour of the summer sun, slashed to reveal the jet-black fabric of a second shirt beneath it. Looping braids of scarlet silk decorated the cuffs of the man’s sleeves—an affectation common among proud ex-officers. He regained his footing and slashed wide with his sabre. It landed on the orc’s shoulder, hitting the crudely quilted pauldron and slashing open its leather outer layer. Straw and feathers showered into the cold morning air.

  The orc was actually six and a half feet tall, but it stood in the crouching posture typical of a rampaging greenskin, and thus seemed to have only a head’s worth of height advantage on its opponent. Its face alone had to be two feet long, most of it misshapen, osseous jaw. Yellow, uneven tusks lined its mouth. Its eyes were beady red pinpricks. Taut, rocky muscles shifted under tight, shiny skin, mottled in a range of hues from olive to emerald. It wore piecemeal armour: a layer of loose chain cocooned its chest, with bits of scavenged, hammered-out human armour attached to it with loops of wire. Leather guards covered its arms and its left leg. The right was bare, except for a thick, mouldering bandage swaddled around the creature’s knee.

  The orc pulled its spear back for another thrust, but the old campaigner spanked it easily aside with the flat of his sabre blade. The orc bellowed out a thwarted groan and dropped its spear. From a scabbard at each hip, it jerked loose a pair of serrated, crescent-shaped daggers. It lunged.

  Its target—the old campaigner—fought on, defending a knot of terrified fellow humans. They huddled together, wedged between a large wooden cart, sprung from its axle, and an outcrop of sharp-edged, barren rock.

  Others fought alongside the man of Nuln. To his left, a short, slim man with a round, bald face waited in a defensive stance. He traded ineffective, testing swipes with an orc opponent of his own. To the campaigner’s right, a pudgy man perspired through a face padded in baby fat. He thrust a hayfork at a one-eyed greenskin that had a human femur stuck in its belt. The fourth defender was tall and gnarled. His head was topped with a flat brush of hair and he held the handle of an oaken cudgel in his knobbly fist. He poked it confidently out at a runtish orc, keeping up a constant patter of salty taunts. The orc, uncomprehending, darted at him. The gnarled man jerked back, his display of bravado spoiled.

  The grunts of the defenders and the expectant, sibilant hisses of the foamy-lipped orcs found echoing surfaces amid rocky slopes to the east and west. They were battling in one of the narrower points of the Blackfire Pass, the strategic fissure inside the Black Mountain range, which separated the Empire of men from the wild and hostile lands to the south. Dark peaks imposed themselves all around the battling figures, their lower reaches strangled by twisted pines, their frozen pinnacles hooded in ice and snow. Rain and dew dampened the ground beneath the skirmishers’ feet before they turned to frost. When they stepped, the battlers slid in frigid mud.

  The smallest of the orcs, the one who fought the gnarled man, slipped in the muck. The runt bleated as he fell on the flat of his long, needle-like blade. The gnarled man took swift advantage, leaping forward to bash repeatedly at the orc’s head. The creature’s face bounced up and down as the cudgel smacked into its helmet, building a dent in it.

  Across the narrow flat of the pass, two figures, sprawled out on their stomachs, surveyed the scene. They were concealed from both sides by the rotting trunk of a fallen pine.

  “See?” said Angelika Fleischer. “No altruism’s required here. They’ve got things well in hand.”

  “Only the smallest of the orcs is down,” observed her companion, Franziskus.

  Angelika Fleischer was a long, scrawny woman of young but indeterminate age. Her cheekbones were high, her nose slim and narrow, her chin a little pointed. A dark mop of ragged hair covered her head. A cracked leather coat clung close to her lithe frame, drawing tight across her shoulder blades, yielding to each protruding vertebra. Below it she wore a sooty tunic that extended below her belt, forming a bit of a skirt. That added a second layer of fabric to her meatless buttocks. Black leggings and long leather boots completed her field attire. A long dagger waited for her in its home at her belt; its twin did the same hidden in the cuff of her boot. She kept her glittering eyes fixed on the unfolding skirmish. The black pools of her irises were indistinguishable from the depths of her pupils.

  In an expression already familiar to her, Franziskus furrowed down the fine lines of his aristocratic face, pressing his blond, scarcely visible eyebrows near to one another. At the same time he formed a pout with his pale lips. Blue morning light heightened the azure of his eyes. His mane of flaxen hair had not seen water in many days, so it hung sullenly around his head and shoulders, deprived of its full glory. He had carefully arranged himself so that he was entirely covered by his elk-hide cloak, a recent and extravagant purchase. It was collared in soft and rusty fox-fur. Beneath the cloak he wore a nondescript white cotton shift and brown cotton trousers. Flat-soled, low-cut boots shod his narrow feet.

  “That may be so,” said Angelika. “But you know my policy. I don’t intervene in a fight till it’s over—and then I only do so to profit from its leavings.”

  The small orc bounced up from the sodden ground and, apparently unfazed by the dozen or so vicious cudgel blows its cranium had sustained, lunged at the gnarled man, hissing phlegm at him. The orc chewed the man’s ankle as the man waved frantic arms, working to maintain his balance. Arse-first,
the man went down. The orc crawled up his leg. The man kicked it in the face.

  Meanwhile, the other three men traded blows with the other three orcs, clanging sword against sword or landing ineffectual blows against armour.

  “We must act. Virtue commands it,” said Franziskus, wriggling forward to improve his viewing angle. “There are women, there, among the pilgrims.”

  “There is a woman here,” replied Angelika, hiking a thumb at herself, “and she’s fought more than enough orcs for one lifetime.” She positioned herself for a better look. “What makes you say they’re pilgrims?”

  “Why else would ordinary folk come so far down the pass?”

  Angelika saw a flash of silver on the ample bosom of one robed woman, but could not identify her jewellery with any precision. “Silver?” she said, unable to suppress a note of rising interest.

  “If they are pilgrims, we have a religious duty to assist them,” said Franziskus.

  “To hell with gods, and those who follow them.”

  Franziskus’ hand fidgeted on the scabbard of his sabre.

  The small orc gnawed on the gnarled man’s knee. The man slammed the burl of his cudgel into the left side of its skull. The orc’s eye popped from its socket. With the heel of his kicking boot, the man ground it to paste. The stunted orc screamed. The man deftly flipped his cudgel, so that the handle pointed outwards, and jammed it into the orc’s mouth, breaking through a wall of tusky teeth. He rammed the handle down deeper, navigating it into the orc’s gullet. He was choking the creature. Arms twitching, hands flailing, the orc helplessly slapped wet ground. The man persisted. The orc quivered. Gore erupted from its mouth, coating the cudgel and the knotty hands that held it. The man pushed it further in. The orc went limp. The man slid his weapon free of his suffocated enemy. The orc flopped onto the ground.

  “As I said,” said Angelika. “Well in hand.”

  Whip-quick, the big orc snaked out its hand, grabbed the ex-officer by the wrist and, in a single quick and brutal motion, snapped it back. The dull crack of popping bones reverberated through the pass. The sabre fell uselessly from the campaigner’s hand and splashed into a shallow puddle. The orc stabbed down with the curved dagger in its free hand, digging it into the flesh between his prey’s neck and clavicle.

  Franziskus said, “This cannot be borne.”

  He heaved himself out from behind the fallen log. Inarticulately hollering, he drew his sabre, waving both it and his free arm over his head. At first, Angelika thought he had gone completely and utterly mad, but then understood his intent: he was trying to draw the attention of the orcs away from the pilgrims.

  All heads, man and greenskin alike, swivelled toward the shrieking madman bounding at them. The short, bald man recovered first: he opened a gash on his opponent’s knee with the edge of his sword. The rotund fellow with the hayfork was the slowest to regain his wits. His orc punished him with a helmeted head-butt to the forehead. He staggered back. The one-eyed orc swerved around him to get at the shaking, moaning huddle of pilgrims. The pudgy man spun and launched himself at the orc. He wrapped himself around the marauder’s waist, using his considerable weight to bring it down. He bounced on the small of its back, pinning it to the earth.

  The big orc had the campaigner on his knees, pushing him off his blade. It raised its arm for another blow. The gnarled old man leapt into him, banging shoulders, before bouncing off and sliding into the mud. He grabbed at the orc’s leg. The big orc stomped down at his head, but the old salt rolled from the path of the blow.

  A man in an elaborately embroidered robe broke from the huddle of pilgrims to grab the campaigner’s shoulders and drag him away from the big orc. The campaigner protested, blood bubbling from his mouth. The fancy-robed man dragged him anyway.

  The big orc landed a kick to the gnarled pilgrim’s gut. The man doubled up at its feet. The orc raised its curved knife, looked down at the man then seemed to reconsider. Instead it plunged into the mass of helpless pilgrims. It seized the nearest of them: a portly woman covering her hair with an intricately folded sister’s wimple. Grabbing her habit by the neck and waist, the orc heaved her over its head, howling in sadistic triumph. She yowled her terror in a surprisingly deep contralto voice.

  Franziskus arrived, circuiting around a maze of mostly-prone combatants. He grunted out a challenge to the big orc, demanding that it turn and fight. The orc dropped the woman; pilgrims surged up to break her fall. She fell into them, making a tangle of limbs and torsos.

  Franziskus hacked up at the creature’s neck, but it turned, and he hit only the shoulder piece of its armour. It dangled over the orc’s chest, its strap severed. Franziskus slashed the orc again. The blade made a metallic banging noise as it made joint-wrenching contact with a solid chunk of breastplate.

  “Someone help me!” Franziskus cried. “It’ll take more than one to put this monster down!”

  The pudgy pilgrim bounced on top of his writhing orc and shrugged. The man in the embroidered robe looked abashedly away. The gnarled man staggered, crouching, looking for his dropped cudgel. The big orc sliced the air under Franziskus’ nose with its crescent blade. Franziskus jogged backwards, slipping on slick grass. He aimed an ill-balanced blow at the orc and swung wide. He’d only recently switched from a duelling rapier to a heavier blade, and had yet to master the new weapon.

  Angelika shook her head and rolled her eyes. Keeping her head low, she crept into the melee. She sidled up to the fat pilgrim sitting on the orc. She had her dagger out. “Grab its head up,” she told the man. He stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Grab its head up!” she repeated.

  Franziskus ducked another of the big orc’s blows.

  The fat man grabbed his orc’s head and pulled it up, exposing its neck to Angelika. With the point of her dagger, she sawed a long incision in the greenskin’s throat, opening it up. Gore flooded out like water through a bursting dam.

  Angelika pointed to the fallen campaigner’s sabre, which lay in the muck a few yards from the fat man’s sausage-shaped fingers. “Take that and join the fight!” she commanded.

  The pudgy pilgrim’s mouth dropped open.

  Angelika slapped him on the back of the head, “Join the fight!” she repeated, louder.

  Jowls jiggling, he stumbled over to the sabre, hefted it in his hand, and reluctantly edged to Franziskus’ side. The orc pushed through them, heading away from the pilgrims and toward his spear. Franziskus rang his sabre on the greenskin’s helmet. The orc seemed to totter for a moment, then it plucked up its spear and wheeled on them, charging.

  “Trip him!” Angelika cried, climbing up the side of the cart, her nimble feet perched on one of its wheels.

  Franziskus nodded and slid on his knees through the mud, hitting the greenskin’s legs with his shoulder. The orc toppled onto him. The gnarled man, cudgel now ready, gripped it in both hands and bowled the helmet, croquet-style, from the big orc’s head.

  Now on the roof of the cart, Angelika got down on one knee and intently studied the fight between the small bald man and his orc. Each still danced around the other, with no sign of a serious blow on either side. Angelika held her dagger by the blade, between thumb and forefinger, waiting. She studied the slight man’s movements. He anticipated the orc’s feints skilfully, ducking under certain blows, sidestepping others.

  Franziskus still lay beneath the big orc. It bit down at his face, blowing rancid breath at him. Franziskus tightened his gorge, suppressing the urge to vomit. It would be ignominious to die choking on his own puke, trapped beneath an orc.

  Angelika finally saw what she’d been hoping to see: she’d discerned the pattern in the slight defender’s manoeuvrings. She counted under her breath. She threw her dagger. On schedule, the man ducked under an aimlessly swung orcish sword. Angelika’s dagger flew past him towards its intended target: the orc’s eye socket. The man pivoted, squinted at her, and stepped back. The blow killed the orc instantly. Its body collapsed straight as a plank into soggy gr
ass.

  “Get that orc off him!” shouted Angelika, pointing at Franziskus. The gnarled man and the fat man stood to either side of the big orc, and exchanged helpless looks. The orc raised itself to its knees and shot its bandaged knee into Franziskus’ crotch. Franziskus gave out an airless, choking groan.

  The small man leapt over his slain greenskin, his sword raised over his head, and slid into the big orc. The pudgy man scrambled out of his way, but mud squirted out beneath his sandaled feet, and he thumped to earth. The small fellow chopped his sword down on the big orc’s neck. It moved its shoulder to catch the brunt of the blow, its armour shedding broken links of chain. It pushed itself off Franziskus, kneeing him in the gut as a parting gesture, then stomped at the small man, wrapping muscular gloved fingers around his throat.

  Franziskus found the grip of his sabre and rammed the weapon’s razor tip into the gap between the orc’s thigh and codpiece. He felt it find purchase and pushed. It screamed like a gored ox. Franziskus scrabbled to his knees, using the force of the move to push harder on the sabre. The orc reached down and grabbed the sabre blade, howling and yanking it free. It had turned its attention away from the slight man, who now stood with his arm levered back, searching for the best spot to plant a jab.

  “You two!” Angelika shouted, waving at the pudgy man and the gnarled man. “Get in there! Outflank it!” The gnarled man met her eyes, gripped his cudgel tighter, and waded in. The pudgy man reached down for the downed soldier’s sword and did the same. The big orc now stood surrounded, an opponent at each of the four compass points. It snarled, allowing a gob of gluey sputum to escape from its toothy jaw, then caught the hefty man in the side of the head with the point of its elbow. The man collapsed to one knee; the big orc pushed past him, turned on its heels, and commenced to back away from the fray, swiping the air with its curved dagger.