Ravenna had needed no woman’s intuition to see his dark mood, and had immediately sat at her table and poured two large measures of Reikland beer. Sigmar paced the floor like a caged wolf, and she waited patiently for him to sit.
When eventually he did so, she reached out and placed a goblet in his hand.
‘Speak to me,’ she said. ‘What is the matter?’
‘My father insults me,’ stormed Sigmar. ‘The army is to march north and do battle with the Norsii. The kings of the Cherusen and Taleuten beg for our aid and my father has decided to answer their call.’
‘And this insults you how?’
‘I am to have no part in this campaign,’ said Sigmar, taking a great mouthful of beer. ‘I am to be left behind like some forgotten steward while others earn glory in battle.’
Ravenna shook her head. ‘You have such vision, Sigmar, but sometimes you are so blind.’
He looked up, his expression a mix of anger and surprise.
‘Your father honours you, Sigmar,’ said Ravenna. ‘He has entrusted the safety of all he holds dear to you while he is away. Everything he has built over the years is in your care until he returns. That is a great honour.’
Sigmar took a deep breath, followed by another mouthful of beer. ‘I suppose.’
‘There is no “suppose” about it,’ said Ravenna.
‘But to fight the Norsii!’ protested Sigmar. ‘There is glory to be had in battles such as these! There is–’
‘Foolish man!’ snapped Ravenna, slamming her goblet on the table. ‘Have you learned nothing? There is no glory in battle, only pain and death. You speak of glory, but where is the glory for those who will not return? Where is the glory for those left upon the field as food for crows and wolves? I told you I hated war, but I hate more the fact that you men perpetuate it with talk of glory and noble purpose. Wars are not fought for glory or freedom or any other golden foolishness. Kings desire more land and wealth, and the quickest, easiest way to get it is by conquest. So do not come to my table and talk of glory, Sigmar. Glory saw my brother dead.’
Sigmar saw the hurt anger in her face and weighed his next words carefully. ‘You are right, but there are some battles worth fighting,’ he said. ‘Fighting the Norsii is such a battle, for it is not fought for riches or glory, it is for survival.’
‘And that is the only reason I am glad you are not going with your father.’
‘Glad? What do you mean?’
Ravenna softened her tone, and said, ‘Do you believe that the dangers we face every day will lessen while our warriors march north to face the Norsii? There are still beasts, reavers and greenskins to fight, and the other tribes will not be ignorant of your father’s departure. What if the Teutogens or the Asoborns or the Brigundians try to seize Unberogen lands while the king is away? The warriors who march with your father fight for our survival, and I thank the gods that you remain here to do the same. I think you will find no shortage of battles to fight while your father is in the north.’
Nine
Those Left Behind
Fires had gutted the village of Ubersreik, and the scent of charred wood still lingered on the smoky air. A hundred people had made their homes here, and now they were all dead. Scavenging wolves padded through the deserted village, and crows perched on every rooftop. Sigmar rode his grey stallion into the village, an immense sadness weighing heavily on him as he took in the scene of devastation.
The smell of corruption was a sickly tang on the air, and Sigmar spat a wad of unpleasant phlegm to the trampled ground. Wolfgart and Pendrag rode alongside him, and thirty riders followed them into the village, a quarter of those left behind after the king’s army had marched north a month earlier.
Everywhere Sigmar looked, he saw death.
Families had been butchered in their homes, stabbed to death in a frenzy of blades, and then dragged outside and dismembered. Animals lay in rotten piles, skulls crushed, and half a cow lay in the centre of the road.
‘Who did this?’ asked Wolfgart, his anger and anguish clear. ‘Greenskins?’
‘Sigmar shook his head. ‘No.’
‘You sound sure,’ said Pendrag, his voice less emotional, yet Sigmar could still sense the outrage beneath his friend’s control. ‘This looks like the handiwork of orcs.’
‘It’s not,’ said Sigmar. ‘Orcs do not leave bodies behind them when they are this deep in human lands. They feed on them. And there is no spoor or orc daubings. As vile as this is, it is too neat for orcs.’
Pendrag’s face was a mask of disgust, and he turned away from the blackened, brutalised bodies piled in the doorway of a burnt-out home.
‘Then what?’ asked Wolfgart. ‘You think men did this? What manner of man kills women and children with such savagery?’
‘Berserkers?’ suggested Pendrag. ‘The Thuringians are said to field warriors that drink firewater that drives them into a maddened frenzy during battle.’
‘I do not believe King Otwin would have allowed such slaughter,’ said Sigmar. ‘He is said to be a hard man, but nothing I have heard of him makes me think his warriors had any part in this… butchery.’
‘Times have changed,’ said Pendrag. ‘Does he even still rule the Thuringians?’
‘As far as I know,’ replied Sigmar. ‘I have not heard of any other taking his throne.’
‘Then perhaps some new bandit chieftain is making an example of this place,’ said Pendrag.
‘There’s too much left behind,’ replied Wolfgart. ‘Bandits would have cleared this place out, and why burn it to the ground? You can’t rob people next season if you kill them.’
Sigmar halted his horse in the middle of the devastated village, turning in his saddle to take in the full measure of the slaughter and destruction around him. Despair settled on him as he thought of the people who had died here. How they must have screamed when the flames and the enemy took them.
‘Why didn’t they fight?’ asked Wolfgart, riding alongside him.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Sigmar.
‘There are no swords in the wreckage. No one tried to fight them.’
‘They were only farmers,’ pointed out Pendrag.
‘They were still men,’ snapped Wolfgart. ‘They could still have fought to defend themselves. I see axes and a few scythes, but nothing to make me think that anyone fought. If a man comes into your home with murder in mind, you kill the bastard. Or at least you fight him however you can, with a carving knife, an axe or your fists.’
‘You are a warrior, my brother,’ said Sigmar. ‘To fight is in your blood, but these were farmers, no doubt exhausted after a day in the fields. The attackers came on them at night, and our people had no chance to defend themselves.’
Wolfgart shook his head. ‘A man should always be ready to fight, farmer or warrior.’
‘They counted on us to protect them,’ said Sigmar, ‘and we failed them.’
‘We cannot be everywhere at once, my friend,’ said Pendrag, removing his helmet. ‘Our lands are too vast to patrol with the few warriors left to us.’
‘Exactly,’ said Sigmar. ‘It was arrogant of us to assume we could protect our lands ourselves, but Wolfgart is right, every man should be ready to fight. We have made sure that every warrior in our lands has a sword, but we should be making sure that every man has a sword.’
‘Having a sword is all very well,’ said Wolfgart. ‘Having the skill to use it… that is something else.’
‘Indeed it is, my friend,’ replied Sigmar. ‘We need to begin a system of training throughout our lands so that every man knows how to wield a sword. Each village must maintain a body of warriors to defend against such attacks.’
‘That will take time,’ said Pendrag. ‘If it is even possible.’
‘We must make it possible,’ snapped Sigmar. ‘What use is an empire if we cannot defend it? When my father returns, we will draw up plans to institute a system of raising troops, training them and equipping them in every village. You are
right, our land is too big to defend with one army, so each village must look to its own defence.’
The discussion was brought to a halt when Cuthwin and Svein emerged from the forest on the north edge of the village and made their way towards the three warriors.
From Svein’s expression, he could see that the suspicion forming in his mind had been correct. The two scouts approached, and Sigmar slid from the back of his horse as the craggy-featured Svein squatted on his haunches and sketched in the dirt.
‘Perhaps fifty riders, my lord,’ said Svein. ‘Came in from the west just as the sun was setting. They drove through the village, burning as they went. Another group came in from the east and caught any who fled. Most people were killed in the open, but the rest were driven back to their homes and burned to death inside.’
‘Where did the raiders go after they had killed everyone?’ demanded Sigmar.
‘West,’ said Cuthwin, ‘following the line of the forest to the coast.’
‘But they didn’t keep to that line, did they?’
‘No, my lord,’ agreed Cuthwin. ‘After three miles or so they cut north following the river.’
‘Good work,’ said Sigmar, standing and rubbing ash from his woollen leggings.
Pendrag said, ‘You know who did this. Don’t you?’
‘I have an idea,’ admitted Sigmar.
‘Who?’ demanded Wolfgart. ‘Tell us, and we’ll descend on them with swords bared!’
‘I believe the Teutogens did this,’ said Sigmar.
‘The Teutogens? Why?’ asked Wolfgart.
‘Artur knows the king has gone north with his army, and he is taking advantage of my father’s absence to test our strength,’ said Pendrag. ‘It seems like the logical conclusion.’
‘Then we burn one of his villages to the ground,’ snarled Wolfgart, ‘and show him what it means to attack the Unberogen!’
Sigmar turned on his friend, anger flashing in his eyes as he waved his hand at the burned and mutilated bodies. ‘You would have us do this to a Teutogen village? Would you kill women and children in the name of vengeance?’
‘You would leave this act of barbarism unanswered?’ countered Wolfgart.
‘Artur will pay for this,’ promised Sigmar, ‘but not now. We have not the numbers to punish him, and we will not give him an excuse to come against us in greater numbers. While the Unberogen army is in the north, we must swallow our pride.’
‘And when your father returns?’ demanded Wolfgart.
‘Then there will be a reckoning,’ said Sigmar.
King Björn pulled his white wolfskin cloak around his shoulders, numbed to his very bones by the northern cold and biting wind that found its way through to his skin no matter how well he wrapped himself in fur. This far north, the climate and landscape were as different from the balmy springs and crisp winters of his lands as night was from day.
Here, the people dwelled in a land of dark pines, rugged valleys and windswept moors, where only the most determined would survive. The people of the north endured wet summers, and winters of such ferocity that entire villages died overnight, buried in snowstorms that wiped them from the face of the world.
Such harsh climes, however, bred a hardy folk, and the inhabitants of the north had impressed Björn with their courage and tenacity in the face of the Norsii invaders.
The king of the Unberogen made his way through the camp of the allied armies, smiling and praising the courage of every group of warriors he passed. Cherusen Wildmen, naked but for painted designs on their flesh and armoured loincloths, danced around fires that burned with blue fire, and Taleuten warriors drank harsh spirits distilled from grain as they spoke of the many heads they had taken.
Nearly seven thousand warriors had marched into battle. Nearly a thousand of them had remained on the battlefield, food for crows and the earth. Hundreds more were screaming in agony as the surgeons did the bloody work of saving the wounded. Ragged lines of tents filled the valley, though most warriors slept rolled in thick furs beside the hundreds of campfires that dotted the landscape like stars fallen to earth.
Alfgeir walked beside the king, clad head to toe in bronze armour and a helmet with a raised visor fashioned into the shape of a snarling wolf. Björn’s champion wore an identical cloak of white wolfskin, a gift from King Aloysis when the Unberogen army had crossed the Talabec and ridden into the land of the Cherusens.
The two men were followed by ten warriors armed with heavy warhammers, their breastplates painted red, and their long beards woven in tight braids, in the fashion of the Taleutens. These men were so sure of their skills that they disdained the wearing of helmets and carried no shields. Björn knew that such confidence was not misplaced.
At least three times on the field of battle, these men had saved his life, crushing Norsii skulls or felling great monsters with their mighty hammers as they closed on the king. Each of Björn’s retinue wore the white wolfskin cloak, and already it was whispered that these were warriors blessed with the strength of Ulric.
The forces of the northmen had penetrated far inland, and the capital of King Wolfila of the Udoses was still besieged in his coastal fortress city. Much blood had yet to be spilled to force the Norsii back to the sea. Thus far, they had been driven back, but these encounters had been mere skirmishes, foreplay before the great battle that had been fought in the rocky foothills east of the Middle Mountains.
The armies of the Norsii were wild and ferocious, but lacked the discipline of the southern tribes. The three kings had formed their armies into a great host and led by example, riding to where the battle was at its most fierce and exhorting their warriors to undreamed of valour.
The seven thousand warriors of the southern kings gave battle against six thousand cold-eyed killers from the northern realms and the black-armoured marauders from across the seas. Hordes of berserk warriors caked in painted chalk and blood, with spiked hair and whirling chains, had begun the battle, charging from the ranks of the enemy, screaming terrible prayers to their dark gods.
Volleys of arrows cut down these madmen, but the slavering hounds with blood-matted fur, and the howling beasts, had not fallen so easily, wreaking fearful havoc amongst the allied line with yellowed fangs that tore out throats, and bladed appendages that hacked a dozen men apart with every blow.
Björn remembered the terrible moment when a charging wedge of dark horsemen atop snorting steeds of shimmering black had crashed into the gap opened by the hounds. Scores of men had died beneath their black lances or were crushed beneath the unstoppable fury of their charge, but Cherusen Wildmen had charged heedless into the mass of armoured horsemen, and had torn them from their saddles, while Unberogen warriors had grimly despatched the fallen warriors with brutally efficient axe blows.
Back and forth the battle had waxed furiously, with each moment bringing a fresh horror from the enemy ranks. However, the courage of the men of the south had held firm. As the day wore on, the attacks from the Norsii became less severe, and Björn had sensed some give in the enemy line.
The allies had advanced in a silent mass of axes and swords, Taleuten horsemen riding around the flanks of the enemy, harassing them with deadly accurate bowfire from their saddles. Unberogen warriors hammered the Norsii line and bent it back like a strung bow, killing enemy warriors by the score. Realising the moment had come to make his presence felt, Björn had ordered his banner forward, and had charged in with his great axe raised high above his head for all his warriors to see.
The kings of the Taleutens and Cherusens saw Björn’s charge, and the air filled with horn blasts and drum beats as the kings of the south rode to battle. Hundreds of horsemen crashed against the army of the northmen, killing them in droves and scattering them like chaff.
A great cheer had filled the valley, and it seemed as though the fate of the Norsii was sealed, their warriors doomed. Then, a Norsii warlord in red armour with a horned helm had ridden through to the front lines of the battle beneath a blood-red
banner. He sat atop a dark steed with eyes like undimmed furnaces, and had restored order to his army, which then fought a disciplined retreat from the valley.
The allied army had not the strength or cohesion to pursue, and Björn had listened with a heavy heart as his scouts informed him that the Northmen had regrouped beyond the horizon and were falling back in good order to a thickly wooded ridgeline.
That night, the armies of the three kings had rested and eaten well, for they all knew there was still fighting and dying to be done.
For days the allies had harried the northmen, seeking to goad them into charging from their defensive bulwark, but fear of the great warlord had kept their natural ferocity in check, and not even the wild, challenging taunts of Taleuten horse archers could dislodge them from their position.
The question of how to pursue the campaign against the northmen was one that vexed the commanders of the allied army greatly, and it was to a council of war arranged to answer this question that Björn now marched.
‘Krugar will want to attack with the dawn, as will Aloysis,’ said Alfgeir as they approached the tent of the kings, ringed by armoured warriors and blazing torches.
‘I know,’ said Björn, ‘and part of me wants to as well.’
‘Attacking up that slope will be costly,’ said Alfgeir as they reached the tent of King Aloysis. ‘Many men will die.’
‘I know that too, Alfgeir, but what choice to we have?’ asked Björn.
Sigmar realised that time was not a constant thing, unbending and iron, but as flexible as heated gold. The weeks since his father had left Reikdorf had passed with aching slowness, whereas the hours he was able to snatch with Ravenna between his journeys around the Unberogen lands had flashed past like lightning.
No sooner had he ridden back through the gates of Reikdorf and fallen into her arms than it seemed he was once again donning his hauberk and shield, ready to do battle. The raids against outlying settlements were continuing, but none had yet repeated the savagery of the attack on Ubersreik.