The sights, sounds and smells of the great hall overwhelmed Sigmar’s every sense: sweat, songs, blood, meat, ale and smoke. Three enormous boars turned on spits before a tall wooden statue of Taal, the hunter god, their flesh crackling and spitting fat into the fire. Though he had eaten enough to fill his belly for a week, the scent of roasting meat made his mouth water, and he smiled as a mug of beer was thrust into his hand.
Wolfgart immediately found more drink, and began an arm wrestling contest amongst his fellow warriors. Trinovantes fetched a plate of food and some water, watching Wolfgart with studied worry, while Pendrag sought out the squat, bearded dwarf sitting in the corner of the hall, who watched the revelries with unabashed relish.
The dwarf was known as Alaric, and had come down from the mountains with Kurgan Ironbeard in early spring with the cartloads of hewn stone for the new longhouse. When the construction work was complete, the dwarfs had left, but Alaric had remained, teaching the Unberogen smiths secrets of metalworking that had provided them with the finest weapons and armour of the western tribes.
Sigmar left his friends to their diversions, knowing that every man must face his Blood Night in his own way. Hands clapped him on his shoulders as he passed, and roaring warriors wished him well on the journey into battle, or boasted of how many orcs they would slay in his name.
He joined with their boasts, but his heart was heavy as he wondered how many would live to see another day like today. These were hard, sinewy warriors with the hunger of wolves, men who had fought beneath his father’s banner for years, but would now ride beneath his. He looked into their faces as he passed, hearing their words, but not the sense of them.
He knew and loved these warriors as men, as husbands and as fathers, and every one of them would ride into battle by his command.
To lead such men was an honour, an honour he did not know if he was worthy to bear.
Sigmar put aside such melancholy thoughts as he emerged from the throng of armoured warriors to stand before his father. Raised up on his throne, King Björn of the Unberogen tribe sat between two carved statues of snarling wolves, and was as intimidating a figure as ever, despite his advancing years.
A crown of bronze sat upon his brow, and hair the colour of iron was bound in numerous braids that hung about his face and neck. Eyes of flint that had resolutely faced the many horrors of the world stared out with paternal affection at the warriors gathered before him as they offered praise to Ulric that he might grant them courage in the coming battles.
Though his father would not be riding to war with them, he wore a mail shirt fashioned by Alaric. The quality of the shirt was beyond the skill of any human smith, but had taken the dwarf less than a day to make. Across the king’s lap was his feared axe, Soultaker, its twin blades red in the firelight.
As Sigmar approached the throne, Alfgeir gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement, his bronze armour gleaming gold, and his unsmiling face apparently carved from granite. Eoforth bowed to Sigmar, and took a step back, his long robes singular in a room full of armoured warriors, his sharp intellect making him one of the king’s most trusted advisors. His counsel was both noble and fair, and the Unberogens had many times benefited from his foresight and wisdom.
‘My son,’ said Björn, waving Sigmar to stand beside him. ‘Is everything well? You look troubled.’
‘I am well,’ said Sigmar, taking his place at his father’s right hand. ‘I’m simply impatient for dawn. I hunger to put the Bonecrusher to the sword and drive his army back into the mountains.’
‘Curse his name,’ said Björn. ‘That damn greenskin warlord has been the scourge of our people for years. The sooner his head is mounted above this throne the better.’
Sigmar followed his father’s gaze, feeling the weight of expectation upon him as he saw the many trophies mounted on the wall above the throne. Orcs, beasts and foul horrors with great fangs, curling horns and loathsome scaled skin were rammed onto iron spikes, the wall below stained with the blood of their deaths.
Here was the head of Skarskan Bloodhelm, the orc that had threatened to drive the Endals from their homelands, until Björn had ridden to the aid of King Marbad. There was the flayed hide of the great, nameless beast of the Howling Hills that had terrorised the Cherusens for years, until the king of the Unberogen had tracked it to its hideous lair and taken its head with one mighty blow of Soultaker.
A score of other trophies surrounded them, each one with an accompanying tale of heroism that had thrilled Sigmar as a youth, crouched at his father’s feet, and which had stirred mighty, heroic longings in his breast.
‘Any word from the riders you sent south?’ asked his father, and Sigmar put aside the thought of trying to equal his father’s deeds.
‘Some,’ said Sigmar, ‘and none of it good. The orcs have come down from the mountains in great numbers, but it seems they are not going back. Normally they come and they raid and kill, and then they go back to the highlands, but this Bonecrusher keeps them together, and with every slaughter more flock to his banner every day.’
‘Then there is no time to waste,’ said his father. ‘You will do the land a great service as you earn your shield. It is no small thing to reach manhood, boy, and as far as tests of courage go, this is a big one. It is only right that you should feel fear.’
Sigmar squared his shoulders before his father’s stern gaze, and said, ‘I am not afraid, father. I have killed greenskins before, and death holds no fear for me.’
King Björn leaned close and lowered his voice so that only Sigmar could hear him. ‘It is not fear of death that I speak. I already know that you have faced great peril and lived to tell of it. Any fool can swing a sword, but to lead men in battle, to hold their lives in your hands, to put yourself in a position to be judged by your fellow warriors and your king: it is right you should fear these things.
‘The serpent of fear gnaws at your belly, my son. I know this, for it twisted in my gut when Redmane Dregor, your grandfather, sent me out to earn my shield.’
Sigmar looked into his father’s eyes, both a misty grey, and saw true understanding there and an empathy with what he felt. The knowledge that a warrior king as mighty as Björn of the Unberogen had once felt the same thing made him smile in relief.
‘You always did know what I was thinking,’ said Sigmar.
‘You are my son,’ said Björn simply.
‘I am your only son. What if I should fail?’
‘You will not, for the blood of your ancestors is strong. You will go on to do great things as chieftain of the Unberogen when the grass grows tall on my tomb. Fear is not something to turn away from, my son. Understand that its power over a man comes from his willingness to take the easy course of action, to run away, to hide, and you will defeat it. A true hero never runs when he can fight, never takes the easy course over what he knows is right. Remember that, and you will not falter.’
Sigmar nodded at his father’s words, staring out over the warriors, who filled the longhouse with song and raucous merrymaking.
As if sensing his scrutiny, Wolfgart leapt onto a trestle table groaning with mugs of beer and heaped with plates of meat and fruit. The table bent dangerously under his weight as he swept his mighty sword from its sheath and raised it high in one hand. The sword was aimed straight and unwavering towards the roof, an incredible feat of strength, for the weight of his weapon was enormous.
‘Sigmar! Sigmar! Sigmar!’ roared Wolfgart, and the chant was taken up by every warrior in the longhouse. The walls seemed to shake with the power of their voices, and Sigmar knew he would not let them down. Pendrag joined Wolfgart on the table, and even the normally quiet Trinovantes was caught up in the mood of adulation that swept the hall.
‘You see,’ said his father, ‘these men will be your battle-thanes on the morrow, and they are ready to fight and die by your command. They believe in you, so draw strength from that belief, and recognise your own worth.’
As the chant of his name con
tinued around the hall, Sigmar watched as Wolfgart lowered his sword and drew the blade across his palm. Blood welled from the cut, and Wolfgart smeared it upon his cheeks.
‘Ulric, god of battle, on this Blood Night, give me the strength to fight in your name!’ he shouted.
Every warrior in the hall followed Wolfgart’s example, drawing blades across their skin, and offering blood to the harsh, unforgiving god of the winter wolves. Sigmar stepped forward to honour the blood of his warriors, drawing the long-bladed hunting knife from his belt, and slicing the blade across his bare forearm.
His warriors roared in approval, banging the handles of their swords and axes upon their chests. As the cheering continued, the table Wolfgart and Pendrag stood upon finally collapsed under their combined weight, and they were buried in splintered timbers and plates of boar meat, and drenched in beer. Roars of laughter pealed from the walls, and yet more mugs of beer were emptied over the fallen warriors, who took Trinovantes’s outstretched hands and struggled to their feet with bellows of mirth.
Sigmar laughed along with his warriors as his father said, ‘With such stout-hearted men beside you, how can you fail?’
‘Wolfgart is a scoundrel,’ said Sigmar, ‘but he has the strength of Ulric in his blood, and Pendrag has a scholar’s brain in that thick skull of his.’
‘I know both men’s virtues and vices,’ said his father, ‘just as you must learn the hearts of those who will seek to counsel you. Draw worthy men to you, and learn their strengths and their weaknesses. Keep only those who make you stronger, and cut away those who weaken you, for they will drag you down with them. When you find good men, honour them, value them and love them as your dearest brothers, for they will stand shoulder to shoulder with you and hear the cry of the wolf in battle.’
‘I will,’ promised Sigmar.
‘Together, men are strong, but divided we are weak. Draw your sword brothers close and stand together in all things. Swear this to me, Sigmar.’
‘I swear it, father.’
‘Now go and join them,’ said his father, ‘and come back to me after the fighting is done, either with your shield or upon it.’
Two
Astofen Bridge
Booming war drums beat the air with the raucous tattoo of the orc horde as they hurled their bodies at the log walls of Astofen. A seething green mass of armoured bodies surrounded the river settlement, the reek of their unwashed flesh and the primal ferocity of their battle-cries filling the air with a terrifying sense of impending doom.
‘They can’t hold much longer,’ said Wolfgart, lying on his front beside Sigmar in the long grass of the gently sloping hill, a league to the east of the besieged town. ‘The gate’s already buckling.’
Sigmar nodded and said, ‘We have to wait for Trinovantes.’
‘If we wait much longer there will be no town to save,’ said Pendrag, all but invisible, swathed in his scaled green cloak.
‘If we attack before he is in position then we are lost,’ said Sigmar. ‘The orcs are too many for us to fight head on.’
‘There’s no such thing as too many orcs,’ snarled Wolfgart, his hands balled into angry fists. ‘We’ve ridden for days without sign of the greenskins, now here they are before us. I say we sound the war horns and Morr take the hindmost!’
‘No,’ said Sigmar. ‘To fight such a host on equal terms is to die, and I have no intention of returning to Reikdorf upon my shield.’
Despite his words to Wolfgart, Sigmar longed to ride with his banner unfurled, the wind in his hair and the clarion call of war horns in his ears, but he knew he must restrain his urge to slay greenskins for now.
Concealed behind the ridge of the eastern hills, the Unberogen horsemen had the element of surprise, for the orcs’ attention was firmly fixed on the embattled settlement before them, but surprise would not be enough to defeat this horde, for surely a thousand or more greenskins surrounded the town.
Astofen sat among a series of low, rocky hills on the banks of a fast-flowing river of the plains that poured from the towering peaks of the Grey Mountains to the south. To see such an open landscape had come as a shock to the young men raised in the forests, when they had ridden from the trees only a day previously, and Sigmar had not dreamed that the land in which he lived was so vast.
The town’s palisade walls were formed from thick logs, the ends of which were sharpened into points, and which boasted defensive towers at each corner. Hoardings formed from planks and wetted hides protected a walkway that ran around the edge of the ramparts, and from here the men and women of Astofen shouted their defiance as they hurled heavy spears into the heaving mass of green bodies.
Sigmar watched with fierce pride as each missile felled an orc, but saw that such deaths were making no difference to the ferocity of the attack. The greenskins were an undisciplined rabble, fighting without apparent cohesion or plan, but one look told Sigmar that simple brutality and numbers would carry the day without difficulty.
Scores of spindle-limbed goblins sent flaming arrows over the timber walls of the town, and many of the closely huddled buildings within were ablaze.
Hulking orcs with green skin so dark that it was practically black waited beside a ramshackle battering ram that sat on splayed wheels, and looked as though a blind man had constructed it. Beside the battering ram, heavy wooden catapults lobbed a variety of missiles at the town: rocks, flaming pitch or even howling orcs with cleavers.
Thin lines of black smoke were etched against the sky from hundreds of fires, and grisly totems had been driven into the hard earth with crude fetishes and bloody trophies dangling from great, horned skulls. The orc horde was easily the largest force of greenskins any of them had ever seen. Each creature was heavily muscled, armoured, and armed with huge blades and a ferocious thirst for battle that was unmatched in all but the most frenzied berserker.
At the centre of the horde, an enormous orc in dark armour waved a monstrous axe, and even from this distance it was clear that the creature must surely be the host’s master.
‘Come on, Sigmar,’ hissed Wolfgart. ‘Unleash us!’
‘Do you want to die?’ asked Pendrag. ‘We have to wait. Trinovantes will not fail us.’
Sigmar fervently hoped that Pendrag was right as he looked along the rutted earth road that led from Astofen’s gate and followed the course of the river as it bent southwards towards a sturdy stone bridge a league away. Beyond the bridge, the road petered out past a line of trees, and the landscape opened into plains of hard, scrubby grass and scattered copses.
He shielded his eyes from the sun, and ignored Wolfgart’s impatient bristling, hoping to see a waving banner, but there was nothing, and he silently willed his friend to hurry.
‘As Ulric wills it,’ whispered Sigmar, chewing his bottom lip as he watched the fighting unfold below, knowing that if they did not attack soon, Astofen would be lost.
Sigmar returned his attention to the town below as the orc leader hurled his great axe at the gate, and a roaring bellow of unleashed fury rose from the greenskin horde. The booming of the drums rose in tempo, and the armoured tide of orcs surged towards Astofen.
Grunting, sweating orcs pushed the wobbling battering ram forwards, its carved head wrought in the form of a giant fist. More flaming arrows arced over the horde, and the clash of iron blades against one another rang like a war cry to the brazen gods of battle.
‘There!’ cried Pendrag. ‘Look! By the bridge!’
Sigmar’s heart leapt as he followed Pendrag’s shout and saw a green banner fluttering in the wind before a stand of trees to the east of the bridge.
‘I told you!’ laughed Pendrag, leaping to his feet, and sprinting back to his horse.
Sigmar pushed to his feet with a wild war cry, and followed Pendrag, with Wolfgart right on his heels. Two hundred Unberogen horsemen waited out of sight of Astofen, their mounts whinnying impatiently, and their faces alive with the prospect of battle. Spear tips gleamed in the noonday sun, and the
bronze rims of wooden shields shone like gold. Pendrag vaulted onto the back of his horse, and swept up Sigmar’s banner, a streaming triangle of crimson cloth with the device of a great boar emblazoned upon it in black.
The sunlight caught the richness of the colour, and to Sigmar’s eyes it seemed as though the banner was a sheet of blood, bound to a spear. He gripped his dapple grey stallion’s mane and swung himself onto its back.
Sigmar’s heart beat wildly, and he laughed with the sheer joy of the waiting being over. The agony of watching his people suffer and die was at an end, and the orcs would pay for their ill-advised aggression. Sigmar slid a long spear with a heavy iron point from the quiver slung around his horse’s neck, and accepted his shield from a nearby warrior.
He lifted shield and spear high as Wolfgart began chanting his name.
‘Unberogens!’ roared Sigmar. ‘We ride!’
Sigmar dug his heels into his mount’s flanks, and the beast surged forwards as eager for the fight as he. With a howling war cry, his warriors followed him, and lifted their own spears high as Wolfgart blew a soaring, ululating blast of the war horn.
His horse crested the rise before him, and he leaned forward over its neck as it thundered downhill. He threw a glance over his shoulder as his warriors came on in two ragged lines, one after the other. Their armour gleamed, and brightly coloured cloaks were streaming out behind them like the wings of mighty dragons.
The ground shook with the hammer blows of their hoof beats, and Wolfgart blew the war horn again and again, its valiant note easily carrying through the air. Sigmar rode hard and fast, urging his mount to greater speed as the tempo of the battle ahead paused and both orc and man turned to see what fate rode towards them.
Cheers erupted from the timber walls of Astofen as its defenders saw the hundreds of riders galloping to their rescue. Sigmar gripped the flanks of his horse with his knees, lifting his shield and spear high for his following warriors to see.
In disdain for the foe before him, Sigmar had eschewed armour, and rode without mail or plate to protect him. Like a savage warrior of a forgotten age, Sigmar rode tall in the wind, his hair a golden stream behind him, and the muscles of his chest pumped for battle.