Chapter One

 

 

General Count von Brechthold regarded the land below with the same steady gaze as the raptors which circled overhead. These pastures comprised the last few undisputed miles of Hochland before the border was lost to the wilderness. Several barons had laid claim to those wilds, but none had tried to collect taxes there. None had been foolish enough.

“Damn fine day for it, isn’t it, Viksberg?” the general asked. His blue eyes twinkled within the weathered crumple of his face and the tips of his moustache twitched like the whiskers of a terrier who can smell a rat.

“Yes, count,” Viksberg replied, and tried to look equally enthusiastic. He had been given a command in the count’s force as a favour to his deceased father and he didn’t want to appear ungrateful. Even so, he found enthusiasm hard to muster as he examined the bright blue sky through bloodshot eyes. The hoch had been flowing last night, and he was still feeling delicate.

“A damn fine day for it,” he said.

What he didn’t say was that it would be an even finer day for being somewhere else. Somewhere a long, long way away. The annual cull was all very well, but there were always casualties. Always horrific casualties.

Viksberg swallowed then lifted his telescope to examine the ground below them. It had been used before, and with good reason. The gods who had made the Empire had crafted it into a perfect killing field. From the crest of this hill a mile of gradually sloping pasture rolled down to the sudden dark line of the forest. It was one of the Empire’s primal forests, ancient and inviolate. The spaces between its gnarled trunks were choked with thorns, and even in the clear morning light a permanent gloom reigned beneath its canopy.

Viksberg peered nervously through the lens into that darkness. It was incredible that anything could move amongst such tangled snares of vegetation, let alone things as big as the creatures they were hunting. They would be in there now, merged invisibly into the decay of their domain.

In fact, Viksberg thought, they were probably watching him. Watching and hungering.

He suppressed a shudder and switched his gaze to the rows of feeding posts that stood half a mile down the slope between him and the forest. They had been hewn from massive tree trunks and each had been buried up to half its length in the ground.

Flies swarmed around them, feasting on the rotting blood that stained the gnawed wood. For the past two days these posts had been used to hold a pitiable variety of animals. Lame horses, old mules and spavined sheep, anything that could be bought cheaply but which still had a pulse.

Viksberg grimaced as he thought about what had befallen the poor creatures. Even half a mile away their screams had lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. Some of them had sounded almost human in the extremity of their terror.

And the way that they had been killed. It had been like nothing he had ever seen before.

Viksberg closed his telescope and took the stopper out of his flask. He tried to conceal the trembling in his hands as he raised it to his lips and took a long, gurgling swig. The fire of the liquid helped to dispel the memory, and he forced a good-natured grin as he replaced the stopper.

“Bit early for that, isn’t it?” one of his brother officers asked.

“Isn’t that what the midwife said to your sister?” Viksberg snapped back. Somebody snorted with laughter and the man he had insulted turned red.

“Apologise for that comment,” he said, his hand already on the hilt of his sabre.

“I apologise,” Viksberg muttered, and cursed himself for a fool. The last thing he wanted was a duel with some meat-headed soldier. He had enough to—Why oh why had he volunteered to lead one of the state regiments? Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut and stayed safely back in Hergig?

It was the drink that had got him into this mess, he decided. It always was. As usual on such occasions he swore that he would never touch the stuff again.

“Ah, here comes breakfast!” Count von Brechthold guffawed. The assembled officers laughed dutifully as the livestock detail dragged their victims towards the feeding posts. It had been an easy enough task at first but now, with the smell of the previous day’s massacre in their nostrils, the animals fought with dumb terror. The men whispered and soothed, kicked and dragged. Some had tears in their eyes as they led their charges to the feeding posts. The fattened flies rose in expectant clouds before them.

“Glad that this is the last time I’ll have to watch this,” one of the officers muttered.

“Don’t be so bloody sentimental,” von Brechthold scolded him. “They’re dying for a good cause.”

“They certainly are, general,” Viksberg loudly agreed, and turned a haughty eye on the man who had spoken.

When he turned back it was to see that one of the horses had slipped its bonds. It was a bony old thing with a sway back, but as soon as it was free it ran like a thoroughbred.

Viksberg wished that he could follow it.

Barely half the animals had been properly tethered when, with a sudden, ravenous roar, the forest vomited out the ragged horde of its vile spawn.

They spilled from its depths like maggots from the belly of a corpse, and although all were horned and hoofed and shaggy with verminous fur no two were exactly alike. Some stood barely as tall as a man, their twisted forms lean and skinny. Others loomed far above them, their muscles bulging with terrible power. Beneath the filth that matted their fur the creatures were striped and piebald, grey and brown. One was albino, its pink eyes making it seem even more inhuman than its fellows. Another, hunchbacked, scuttled forwards on all fours.

And they stank. Even a mile away the sour, ammonia stench of the horde drifted along the warm spring breeze, and Viksberg had to fight down a roll of nausea.

It was all too much for the men who had been struggling to bind the animals. They gave up and, suddenly united with their charges, they flew in blind panic.

“Bad show,” von Brechthold muttered.

“I’ll see that they’re flogged, general,” Viksberg offered, and was horrified by the way his voice squeaked.

“Never mind that now,” the count said. “Just get back to your men. All of you now. Quick!”

The assembled officers scattered like a flock of chickens. Leaving the general with his personal guard they galloped back to where their regiments waited behind the hill. They had been formed up there since before dawn, and Viksberg took comfort from their massed ranks as he rode to his own unit.

These were the state regiments, the best trained and the best armed in the whole of the Empire. They stood in neat, perfectly dressed ranks. The armour they wore over their red and green uniforms gleamed with captured sunlight and their eyes were hard with arrogant courage.

Like all state regiments, iron discipline was the source of their strength. Years of training had seasoned each man, binding him into a unified whole that was so much mightier than the sum of its parts.

Three regiments of knights stood in the front rank. Behind them six more regiments of foot soldiers waited. These were the spearmen and the halberdiers, the solid core of the army. Their formations were laid out with the geometrical precision of some vast, mechanical device. Of the two thousand men, not a single one stood out of place.

Viksberg felt his fear beginning to abate as he rode to where his own regiment stood. They were halberdiers, the paragons of their profession. Each barrel-chested man carried the murderous weight of his pole arm as lightly as a broom, and they stood to attention as perfectly as toy soldiers. Usually Viksberg had little but contempt for his inferiors, but here and now he felt a sudden affection for them.

“Are the men ready?” he asked the captain, a scarred veteran who had spent a lifetime clawing his way up from the ranks.

“Yes, sir,” the captain bellowed. “Siggi will take your horse if you are ready to join us.”

Viksberg hesitated. He could see other infantry officers dismounting, ready to join their men for the fight to come. He knew that this was normal during drills, but surely nobody could expect him to give up his mount during a real battle? He was an aristocrat, Sigmar damn it! His blood was valuable. Priceless. It would be madness to give up the means of escape if things became… difficult.

“Don’t worry, sir,” the captain said. “Siggi will take good care of it.”

Viksberg could have cursed the thug. Instead, aware that every other officer had done so, and aware that the entire regiment was watching him, he dismounted.

“We’ll keep it with us,” he decided defiantly. “Captain, see that it is kept safe in the back rank.”

“That’s not usual, sir,” the captain responded. “It may hinder our formation.”

“Sigmar rot you, man, do as you’re told!”

“As you say,” the captain agreed stiffly. “Sir.”

No sooner had the horse been led to the back ranks than the trumpeters signalled the advance, and the signal flags started fluttering from the hilltop. With an explosion of noise the regimental drums started to beat, throbbing with a hypnotic pulse as the army began to move.

Viksberg thought back to the council of war he had attended last night. As always when facing this old foe, von Brechthold’s plan was a simple hammer and anvil. The knights would lead the charge. Packed together as tightly as the fingers in a mailed fist, they would smash through the seething horde of the enemy, and then expand out behind them to cut off their escape.

Meanwhile the infantry would be advancing on a wide front, a solid phalanx of well-drilled steel. Invincible within the armour of their disciplined ranks they would grind through the encircled beasts like a butcher’s saw through a joint of venison.

Every year the plan was the same, and every year it worked. The beasts would die like the vermin they were. Their slaughtered bodies would be left for the carrion, and the farms and villages of Hochland would be safe for another year.

Nothing to it really, Viksberg told himself as he marched forwards with his men. It’s a cull, not a battle. There was nothing to worry about.

He glanced back through the ranks to snatch a reassuring glimpse of his horse’s head.

Oh Sigmar, he thought. Let it be over.

It was almost a relief when the knights crested the hill and, with a chorus of drawn-out bugle calls, broke into a canter.

 

Although he didn’t show it, General Count von Brechthold was disappointed. He had won the honour of commanding the cull on three other occasions, and each time he had bagged many more of the beasts than were gathered here today. Even after three days of baiting, there could hardly be more than a thousand down there.

Never mind, he thought. It’s not as though they’re a real army anyway.

He felt the thunder of the knights’ advance as they swept up behind him. His own mount, who was itself a charger, shifted impatiently beneath him but he held it in check. There would be time enough to take his own scalps later. For now his job was to make sure that the regiments kept to the plan.

He watched as the first ranks of knights thundered past him. Their armour was so dazzling in the sunlight that it almost seemed to be aflame, and their standards glowed against the deep blue vault of the sky. There were some who said that handgunners would one day be a match for these warriors, but in that moment the count knew that such a thing would never be. The very ground trembled beneath the power of the knights’ onslaught, and as they cantered down the slope they looked as beautiful and terrible as angels.

The beasts below were too wracked with hunger to notice the line of cavalry that had appeared on the slopes above them. It wasn’t until the knights had closed to within charge range and the high, clear notes of their trumpets rang out that the foul things looked up and realised that their doom was upon them.

Brechthold felt his blood quicken in sympathy as the last high note of the charge was drowned out beneath the bone-shaking thunder of hooves and the jangle and crash of steel.

His mailed fist clenched around his sword when the steel hit the mass of flesh that stood before it.

With barely a pause the knights sliced through their foes. Their lances ran through the first of their victims, skewering the twisted bodies and pinning them to those who stood behind. Then, lances gone, the knights drew their swords with a steel hiss. The blades rose and fell, shining at first, then dulled with the dark filth of their enemies’ blood.

And all the while the juggernaut of their charge continued, ploughing on through the mob of terrified beasts until it emerged on the other side.

Another chorus of bugle calls, and this time the knights’ formation opened up, the three regiments spreading out as suddenly as the wings of a stooping eagle. They formed a steel cordon between the enemy and the forest which might have offered them sanctuary.

“Well done,” Brechthold muttered approvingly, and for the first time he turned to look at the infantry who were advancing down the hill in the knights’ footsteps. If the knights had been surgeons the men who followed them were butchers, their craft simple but methodical.

The count frowned. They were too slow, almost five minutes away from the battle. Against the subhuman vermin that even now milled and knotted in confusion below that would not be a problem, but even so, too slow was too slow. A human enemy might have taken the opportunity to seize the initiative. With the elements of the army divided, he might have counter-attacked, perhaps defeating the regiments piecemeal. He might have…

Von Brechthold’s mouth fell open as, from the darkness of the forest, a hundred drums rolled into life. Horns sounded, savage and toneless compared to the knights’, but loud enough to drown out even the shrieks of the fallen and the pulse of the marching regiments that closed in on the mob below.

His confusion turned into fear as von Brechthold realised that that mob was gone, in its place, forming up into ragged blocks that seemed a hideous caricature of his own regiments, was something resembling an army.

It should have been impossible. The beasts had formed squares, but they didn’t do that. Even as he watched the largest of the enemy were bullying and beating their fellows into an even tighter formation. That was impossible too. Then a score of crude standards appeared, sprouted up as suddenly as weeds after summer rain.

Where seconds before he had been facing a foe as routed as cattle in an abattoir, now, von Brechthold realised, he was facing something resembling an army.

No, not one army. Two.

The cacophony of drums and horns grew even louder as the dark fastness of the forest spewed out another wave of the horrors. There was no doubting the discipline that bound this wave together. Although hundreds of lesser creatures swarmed around them like flies around a butcher’s blade, their hooves crashed down in a rhythm which rivalled the humans’ own.

“They’re trapped,” one of Brechthold’s aides said. “The knights are trapped.”

“Yes. I know.”

From their hilltop, the general’s staff watched the thin line of knights. They were as hard and sharp as a razor, but suddenly they were just as brittle. For a moment they milled in confusion, and then their trumpeters called them to order. They turned back to face the enemy they had charged through and, with a wild cry, charged back towards them, ready to hack their way through to safety.

But this time, it was no disorganised rabble they faced. The sand they had so easily cut through before had hardened into solid infantry blocks. The blocks shuddered beneath the knights’ onslaught, but they didn’t break.

They bled beneath the cyclonic steel of the knights’ blades, but they still did not break.

They gave ground beneath the weight of armoured horses, but not much and not enough.

And they did not break.

Then the second wave of the enemy reached the rear of the knights’ line, and suddenly it was the men who started to die. The remains of their formation collapsed as their horses were torn from beneath them. Their regiments disintegrated, and as the slaughter continued the last survivors met their doom, alone and surrounded.

 

Von Brechthold was unaware of the tears which ran down the runnelled lines of his face. He cursed himself for not having kept a proper reserve force. He cursed himself for not teaching his regiments to keep tighter together, and for not having developed a proper contingency plan in case something like this happened.

Then he thrust aside such pointless indulgences and cursed the infantry instead. Events had developed with such terrifying speed that they were still plodding on, holding to the original plan even as it turned to ruin before them.

“Charge!” the general cried, signalling for his drummers and flag men to pass the message on. “Charge!”

If all of the regiments had followed his lead, they might have arrived in time to save some of their comrades. Perhaps the remains of the knights could have held out until the infantry had reached them. Perhaps the beasts’ new-found discipline would have snapped when caught between two foes. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

In fact, only two of the six regiments charged when they were ordered to. The others were not as alert. It took them time to understand the order, and more time to follow their comrades’ lead. As for Viksberg’s regiment, it didn’t charge at all.

Von Brechthold watched as the solid front of his infantry fell apart. Skirmishers fell upon one of the outermost regiments, attacking the unguarded flanks with the ruthless instinct of wolves snapping at an ox’s hamstrings. Another regiment reached the enemy just as the last of the knights disappeared. They were enveloped, surrounded and torn apart by creatures who now seemed frenzied with victory. The remaining regiments saw what was happening, and the captains slowed. Then they stopped, balancing on the precipice of retreat.

It was at that moment that the general heard the cavalry beat of speeding hooves coming from the east.

For one wild moment he thought that he was saved, for even in the midst of battle he could distinguish a horse’s tread from that of the things before him. He stood in his stirrups to see the riders as they emerged from around one of the sweeping arms of the forest.

They were no knights, that was for certain. Even at this distance he could see that they were dull and scruffy. He didn’t care. Irregular as they might be, they were fine horsemen, and even as he watched their pace quickened into a gallop. They came in a great mass, sweeping across the green pasture like the shadow of one of the great white clouds that drifted above.

It wasn’t until they had drawn close enough for him to see what they truly were that he lost all hope.

It was a strange feeling, this despair, almost liberating. He had no more decisions to make, no more mistakes to avoid. He and his army were doomed. As the savage cavalry thundered towards the remains of his army, the general knew that there was only one thing to do. Still standing in his stirrups he unsheathed his sword and, with a roar of defiance, led his bodyguard in a final charge.

 

“My lord, we must advance,” the captain said, his exasperation only held in check by a lifetime of military discipline. “We are ordered to. Look, see how the other regiments are outstripping us!”

But Viksberg was already looking. In point of fact, he was looking at the destruction of the spearmen who had so rashly followed the order to charge. They were no more than two hundred yards closer to the enemy than he was, and he could hear the terror in their voices as they were swallowed by the endless, heaving mass of the enemy.

Compared to the stinking ocean of the beasts’ massed bodies the regiment looked tiny, forlorn. The troopers, who an hour ago had seemed so impressive to Viksberg, now looked like children in the shadow of these savage creatures. Even their standard, once so magnificent, now seemed like no more than a vainglorious boast.

Viksberg grimaced as the spearmen’s square finally broke. The flanks caved in and suddenly there was no regiment, just an explosion of men desperately trying to survive.

“My lord, I am going to give the order to charge,” the captain told him.

“No.” Viksberg shook his head. He had caught sight of another regiment. Or at least, of the beasts who had closed around it, their ragged formations as tight and deadly as a strangler’s fingers. Above the ringing steel and guttural roars of the enemy, he could already hear the men’s shouts becoming shriller, more desperate.

“Sigmar help them,” he mouthed reflexively.

At that moment, as if in answer to his prayer, the thunder of hooves sounded in the east. He could feel the thunder of the charge through the soles of his boots, and the traditional cry of the charge was taken up by the men around him.

“Urra!” The men cried in salute. “Urra!”

Viksberg felt his stomach unknotting in relief as he peered through the confusion of the battle to catch a glimpse of their saviours. He couldn’t remember any talk of such reserves during the previous night’s planning, but that hardly mattered now. All that mattered was that they were here, the hammer of the Empire, the lightning bolt from a clear blue sky, the steel weight that would tip the scales.

Then the first wave of the charge surged through the melee, and Viksberg realised what they truly were.

For one terrible moment he thought that he was going to scream. Even at this distance he could make out the twisted confusion of their bestial forms. In some ways they echoed those of their kin that had emerged from the forest. They had been created by the same hideous fusion of men and beasts, and the viciously curved horns and yellow goat eyes and snarling muzzles were the same as those Viksberg had already seen.

But whatever foul gods had shaped these blasphemous creatures had gone even further. Where others had remained vaguely humanoid, these things’ torsos melted seamlessly into horses’ bodies. They galloped forwards with the instinctive grace that it took a knight a lifetime to learn, and they held their crude axes and stone-headed spears with an effortless balance.

As Viksberg watched they hit the first of their victims, leaping over their lesser brethren to smash into the faltering lines of the humans. The formation wavered. Then it broke.

It was all too much for Viksberg. Even as he had remained frozen, his mind had been working as frantically as a rat caught in a trap. He turned to the captain, his face a haughty mask.

“You wouldn’t desert, would you, captain?” he demanded.

“Of course not, sir.”

“Good. Then stay here. I’m going to get help. You men,” Viksberg called out, turning around, “clear the way. I’m coming through.”

“What?” For a moment the captain was lost in confusion. He watched as Viksberg started elbowing his way through the neatly dressed ranks behind him. “What are you doing?”

“Going to get help,” Viksberg called back, trying to keep the terror out of his voice. “Reinforcements. Won’t be long.”

As one man, the regiment turned to watch him clamber onto his horse. It shifted nervously beneath him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

“I’ll be back soon,” Viksberg promised and then, with a sense of wild relief, turned and galloped off.

“What a complete…”

“No talking in the ranks,” the captain snarled. “Eyes front. Halberds at port. Big they may be, but they’re still no more than animals. Drummer, sound the advance!”

As Viksberg raced away, his regiment moved towards the galloping horrors who hurled themselves so eagerly forwards to meet them.

 

Viksberg stopped briefly on the crest of the hill, his horse’s flanks heaving. Below him he saw not just defeat but annihilation.

Nobody else, it seemed, had shown the intelligence to withdraw when the storm of defeat had overtaken them. Here and there little knots of men still held out, clustered around ragged and blood-soaked standards. Most had already fallen, clinging to the illusory safety of their regiments with the same misplaced faith of sailors clinging to a sinking ship. Their remains lay trampled into the mud and the gore, cold bodies hacked and gouged and savaged.

Others amongst the fallen had not been so fortunate.

Even before the last resistance had been crushed, the celebratory feasting began. If the beasts below had hungered after the blood of the bait animals, they were starving for the more refined taste of human flesh. Viksberg watched armour being stripped from bodies, and then flesh being stripped from bones. He watched heads torn off, skulls smashed, brains gnawed out of the cavities. He watched a man screaming as he was devoured from the fingertips inwards.

And all the while the sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky above. Somehow the perfection of this spring morning made the nightmare that was unfolding below all the more unreal, and Viksberg sat mesmerised as the last little knot of resistance disappeared beneath the victorious horde.

Then some instinct made him look to the left. Half a dozen of the horse creatures had caught sight of him. Their fur was blackened with spilt blood, and flies swarmed around them. They showed no desire to join in the feasting. It would take more than dead meat to slake their bloodlust.

Viksberg snapped back into the hellish reality of his situation, turned his horse and fled.