“It has to be me. Wolfgart is too wild, and Pendrag must ride at your side with the banner.”
Sigmar had seen the determination in his face, and said, “Then Ulric be with you, brother.”
“If I fight well, he will be,” said Trinovantes. “Now go. Ride with the wolf lord at your side, and kill them all.”
Trinovantes had watched Sigmar return to his men, and raised his sword in salute before swiftly leading his hundred men around the eastern hills, hidden from the orcs, until they had reached this place of concealment on the other side of the bridge.
Looking at the faces of the men under his command, he saw tension, anger and solemn reverence for the fight to come. A few men kissed wolf-tail talismans, or blooded their wolf-skin pelts with cuts to their cheeks. There were no jokes, no ribald banter or ludicrous boasts, as might be expected from warriors about to do battle, and Trinovantes understood that every one of them knew the importance of the duty they were about to perform.
Retreating Unberogen horsemen rode south towards the bridge in ragged groups of three or four, scattered and tired from the frenetic battle. Their arrows and spears were spent, and their swords bent and chipped from impacts with orcs weapons and shields.
Their shields were splintered and their armour torn, but they were unbowed, and rode with the soul of the land surging through them. Trinovantes could feel it, a thrumming connection that was more than simply the thunder of approaching horsemen.
In the last few moments left to him before battle, he instinctively understood the bond between this rich, bountiful land and the men who inhabited it. From distant realms they had come in ages past, and carved a home amid the wild forests, taming the earth and driving back the creatures that sought to keep them from what the gods had seen fit to grant them.
Men tended the land, and the land returned their devotion tenfold in crops and animals. This was a land of men, and no greenskin warlord was going to take that which they had worked and fought to create.
The sound of hooves rose in pitch, and Trinovantes looked up from his thoughts to see the first of Sigmar’s warriors riding hard across the timbers of the bridge. The structure was ancient and dwarf-made, the timbers pale and bleached by the sun, laid across stone pillars decorated with carvings long since worn smooth by the passage of centuries.
Horsemen rode across the bridge, pushing hard for the fresh weapons that Trinovantes and his men had stacked beyond the trees further south. Scores rode past, their horses’ flanks lathered with sweat and blood.
“Who would have guessed Sigmar would be the last to quit the field of battle, eh?” shouted Trinovantes as he saw Wolfgart, Pendrag and Sigmar riding at the rear of the galloping horsemen.
Grim laughter greeted his words, and Trinovantes snapped down the visor of his battle helmet as he saw the orcs pursuing the riders with relentless, single-minded purpose. Obscured by the dust clouds thrown up by the riders, they looked like misshapen daemons of shadow, their bodies hunched, and only the inextinguishable coals of their eyes distinct. Despite their graceless, thick limbs and monstrously heavy iron armour, their speed was impressive, and Trinovantes knew that it was time to perform his duty to the king’s son.
He hefted his axe, the blades polished and bright, and kissed the image of a snarling wolf worked into the spike at the top of the shaft. He lifted the weapon towards the sky, and felt a cold shiver as he saw a single raven circling above them.
The last of the horsemen rode across the bridge, and Trinovantes looked down in time to see Sigmar staring straight at him. As the moment stretched, he felt the simple gratitude of his friend fill him with strength.
“Unberogens, we march!” he shouted, and he led his men onto the road.
Sigmar spat dust as he halted his horse with a sharp jerk of its mane, and circled the cache of spears and swords left beyond the bridge by Trinovantes. The weapons were stacked in such a manner as to naturally form the horsemen up into a wedge aimed at the bridge, and Sigmar saw Trinovantes’ touch in the cunning of the design.
“Hurry!” he cried, leaping from his horse and accepting a skin of water from a warrior with bloody arms. He drank deeply, and emptied the rest over his head, washing the blood from his face as he heard the roar of charging orcs and the clash of weapons behind him.
Sigmar wiped a hand over his dripping face, and pushed through his warriors to better see the furious combat raging at the bridge.
Sunlight flashed on stabbing spears, and Sigmar saw the proud green of Trinovantes’ banner borne aloft in the heart of the battle. Orcs war-cries rose in bellicose counterpoint to the shouted oaths to Ulric, and though the spearmen fought with iron resolve, Sigmar could already see that their line was bending back under the fearsome pressure of the attack.
“Get fresh spears and swords, and remount!” shouted Sigmar, his voice filled with fiery urgency. “Trinovantes is buying us time, and we won’t be wasting it!”
His urgings were unnecessary, for his warriors were swiftly hurling aside their bent and broken swords, before rearming themselves with fresh blades. Every man knew that this time was being bought with the lives of their friends, and not a second was wasted in idle banter.
The name of Ulric was roared, warriors offering the kills they had made to the fearsome god of battle, and Sigmar let them rejoice in the exultation of battle and survival.
Pendrag nodded to him, Sigmar’s banner stabbed into the earth as he ran a whetstone over the blades of his axe. “Trinovantes?”
“Holding,” said Sigmar, angrily wiping the head of Ghal-maraz with a ragged scrap of leather, unwilling to allow the orcs blood and brain matter to foul its noble face a second more.
“How much longer?” asked Pendrag.
Sigmar shrugged. “Not long. They must sound the retreat soon.”
“Retreat?” asked Pendrag. “No, they won’t be retreating. You know that.”
“They must,” said Sigmar, “or else they will be lost.”
Pendrag put out his hand, and stopped Sigmar’s furious cleaning.
“They won’t be retreating,” repeated Pendrag. “They knew that. As did you. Do not dishonour their sacrifice by denying it.”
“Denying what?” bellowed Wolfgart as he rode to join them, his expression eager as though they fought a skirmish against disorganised bandits instead of blood-maddened orcs.
Sigmar ignored Wolfgart’s question, and looked deep into Pendrag’s eyes, seeing an understanding of what he had ordered Trinovantes to do in the full knowledge of what that order entailed.
“Nothing,” said Sigmar swinging the heavy length of Ghal-maraz as though it weighed nothing at all.
“King Kurgan’s weapon is earning its name,” said Wolfgart.
“Aye,” said Sigmar. “A kingly gift, right enough, but there’re more skulls to be split before this day is out.”
“True,” agreed Wolfgart, hefting his great sword meaningfully. “We’ll get to them soon enough.”
“No,” said Sigmar, swinging back onto his horse, and looking north to the battle raging at the bridge, “it won’t be soon enough.”
Blood pooled in Trinovantes’ boot, a deep wound in his thigh washing blood down his leg, and sticking the wool of his tunic to his skin. An orc’s cleaver had smashed his shield to kindling, and cut into his leg, before he had gutted the beast with a swipe of his axe.
His arms felt as though they were weighted down with iron, his muscles throbbing painfully with the effort of the fight. Screams and roars of hatred echoed deafeningly within Trinovantes’ helmet, and sweat ran in rivers down his face.
The warriors with him fought with desperate heroics, their spears stabbing with powerful thrusts that punched between the gaps in the orcs’ crude armour and into their flesh. The pale, dusty ground beneath their feet was dark and loamy with blood, both human and orc, and the air stank of sweat and the coppery promise of death.
Spears and axes clashed, wood and iron broke apart, and flesh and bone were ca
rved to ruin with no quarter asked or given from either side.
The warrior next to Trinovantes fell, an orc’s blade smashing through his shoulder and cutting deep into his torso before becoming stuck fast in his chest. The orc’s fought to drag its weapon clear, but the jagged edge of the sword remained wedged in the man’s ribs. Trinovantes stepped in, his leg on fire with pain, and swung his axe in a furious two-handed swing that smashed into the orcs’ open jaw, and cleaved the top of its skull away.
“For Ulric!” shouted Trinovantes, channelling all his hatred for the orcs into the blow.
The body swayed for a moment before dropping, and Trinovantes screamed as his injured leg threatened to give way beneath him.
A hand reached out to steady him, and he shouted his thanks without seeing who helped him. The noise of battle seemed to grow louder, the cries of dying men and the exultant roars of the orcs sounding as though they were bellowed right in his ears.
Trinovantes stumbled, dropping to one knee as his vision greyed, and the clamour of the fighting suddenly diminished from its previous volume to something heard as if from a great distance. He planted the blades of his axe on the ground as he tried to force himself back to his feet.
All around him, the warriors of the Unberogen were dying, their blood spurting from opened bellies or torn throats. He saw an orc’s lift a wounded spearman and slam his body down on the stone parapet of the bridge, almost breaking him in two before hurling his limp corpse into the river.
Goblin archers on the bridge loosed shafts into the midst of the battle, uncaring of which combatants their arrows hit. Trinovantes felt the warmth of the wet ground beneath him, the sun on his face and the coolness of the sweat plastering his body beneath his armour.
However, for all the death around him, there was heroism and defiance too.
Trinovantes watched as a warrior with two spears punched through his back spread his arms, and leapt towards a group of orcs forcing their way past the flanks. He knocked three of them from the bridge to drown in the river. Sword-brothers fought back to back as the numbers of Unberogens thinned, while the orcs pressed across the bridge with even greater ferocity.
A spear thrust towards him, and instinct took over as the sights and sounds of battle returned with all their vicious din. Trinovantes’ axe smashed the blade from the spear shaft, and he pushed to his feet with a cry of rage and pain. He swayed aside from the blunted weapon, forcing down the pain of his injured leg, and swinging his axe at his attacker.
His blade cut the orcs’ arm from its body, but its charge was unstoppable, and its sheer bulk carried him to the ground. Its blood sprayed him, and he spat the foul, reeking liquid from his mouth.
Too close for a proper strike, he slammed the haft of his axe against the orcs’ face, the fangs splintering beneath the blow. The orcs’ head snapped back, and Trinovantes rolled from beneath it, rising to one knee, and hammering his axe into its skull.
Shrieking pain exploded in his back, and Trinovantes looked down to see a long spear jutting from his chest, the blade wider than his forearm. Blood squirted from either side of the metal, his blood. He opened his mouth, but the weapon was wrenched from his body, and with it any breath with which to scream.
Trinovantes dropped his axe, strength and life pouring from him in a red flood. He looked around at the scene of slaughter, men dying and torn apart by orcs as they finally could stand no more.
His vision dimmed, and he slumped forwards, his face pressed into the bloody ground.
His axe lay beside him, and with the last of his strength, he reached out and curled his fingers around the grip. Ulric’s halls were no place for a warrior without a weapon.
The squawking cry of something out of place penetrated the killing sounds of slaughter, and he lifted his head to see a large raven sitting on the stone of the bridge, the depthless dark of its eyes boring into him with an unflinching gaze.
Despite the carnage, the bird remained unmoving, and Trinovantes saw his banner flutter in the wind behind it, the green fabric bright against the brilliant blue of the sky.
The pain fled his body, and he thought of his twin brother and older sister as he lay his head down upon the rich earth of the land he had fought and died to protect. He heard a distant rumble through the ground, a rising thunder of drums, a sound that made him smile as he recognised its source: the sound of Unberogen horsemen on the charge.
Sigmar saw Trinovantes fall to Bonecrusher’s spear, and let out an anguished howl of anger and loss. The orcs were across the bridge and had fanned out past the trees in a ragged line of charging bodies. After the hard fight at the bridge, any cohesion to their force was lost, and though Trinovantes and his men were dead, they had reaped a magnificent tally of orc corpses.
The orcs were in the grip of their battle lust, and Sigmar saw Bonecrusher desperately trying to form his warriors into a fighting line before the horsemen reached them.
However, it was already too late for them.
Riding at the tip of a wedge of nearly a hundred and fifty horsemen, Sigmar rode with fire and hate in his heart, Ghal-maraz held high for all to see. The ground shook to the beat of pounding hooves, and Sigmar scented the sure and certain tang of victory.
Pendrag rode to his right, the crimson banner snapping in the wind, and Wolfgart was on his left, his blade unsheathed and ready to take more heads.
Sigmar gripped the mane of his stallion tightly. The great beast was tired, but eager to bear its rider back into battle.
Arrows leapt from bows, and spears filled the air as the Unberogen riders loosed one last volley before impact.
Orcs fell before their spears and arrows, and cries of triumph turned to bellows of pain as Sigmar’s charge hit home.
The wedge of Unberogen horsemen cleaved through the orcs, weapons flashing and blood spraying as they avenged the deaths of their brothers in arms. Sigmar’s hammer smote orcs skulls, and crushed chests as he screamed his lost friend’s name.
Strength and purpose flowed along his limbs, and whatever he struck, died. No enemy in the world could stand before him and live. Ghal-maraz was an extension of his arm, its power incredible and unstoppable in his hands.
Blood sprayed the air as the Unberogen riders trampled orcs, easy meat now that their numbers were thinned and they were scattered. With room to manoeuvre, the horsemen were in their element, charging hither and thither, and killing orcs with every spear thrust or axe blow. Orcs were crushed beneath iron-shod hooves, smashed into the ground as the horsemen circled and charged again and again, now that they had the open ground in their favour.
Sigmar killed orcs by the dozen, his hammer sweeping out and crushing the life from them as though they were little more than irritants. His stallion’s flanks were drenched in orcs blood, and his iron-hard flesh dripped with their gore.
At the centre of the host, Sigmar saw the mighty orcs who led the greenskins. Unberogen warriors surrounded Bonecrusher, eager to claim the glory of killing the warlord, but its strength and ferocity were unmatched by any orcs his men had fought, and all who came near it died.
“Ulric guide my hammer!” shouted Sigmar, urging the stallion towards the furious melee surrounding Bonecrusher. He leapt piles of orcs bodies, smashing aside those greenskins foolish enough to get in his way with wild, magnificent sweeps of his hammer.
The battle around him faded until it was little more than a backdrop to his charge, a muted chorus to accompany his performance. His every sense turned inwards until all he could hear was the roar of his breath and the frenetic pounding of his heart as he rode towards his foe.
Bonecrusher saw him coming, and bellowed a challenge, bloody foam gathering at its fanged jaws as it spread its arms wide. Its spear was aimed towards Sigmar’s horse, and as the stallion leapt the last pile of corpses, Sigmar released its mane and hurled himself from its back.
His mount veered away from the thrusting spear as Sigmar sailed through the air, taking his hammer in a two-handed gr
ip.
Sigmar loosed an ululating yell of ancestral hate as he swung his hammer at the warlord.
Ghal-maraz smashed down on Bonecrusher’s skull, and destroyed it utterly, the hammer driving on through the body, and finally exiting in a bloody welter of smashed bone and meat. Sigmar landed beside the body before it fell, and spun on his heel to deliver a thunderous blow to the headless warlord’s spine.
The greenskin chieftain, who had once been the scourge of the lands of men, toppled to the ground, its body pulverised by Sigmar’s fury.
He swept his hammer around, slaying the orcs who stood close to their chief in a furious, unstoppable carnage. Within moments, the largest and most powerful orcs of the horde were dead, and Sigmar bellowed his triumph to the skies, slathered from head to foot in blood, his hammer pulsing with the light of battle.
A horse drew to a halt before him, and Sigmar looked up to see Wolfgart staring down at him with a look of awed disbelief and not a little fear in his eyes.
“They’ve broken!” shouted Wolfgart. “They’re running.”
Sigmar lowered his hammer and blinked, his senses turning outward once again as he took in the scale of the slaughter they had wreaked upon the orcs.
Hundreds of corpses littered the ground, trampled by horses or cut down by Unberogen warriors. What little remained of the orcs horde was fleeing in disarray, the power of their lust for battle broken by the death of their leader.
“Chase them, brother,” spat Sigmar. “Ride them down and leave none alive.”
——
Morr’s Due
From her vantage point in the hills surrounding Reikdorf, Ravenna thought the view towards the south quite beautiful and, for a moment, she could almost forget that the young men of her settlement had ridden there to war and death against the greenskins.
Below her, Reikdorf sat on the mud flats that spread from the riverbanks, squat and unlovely, but home nonetheless. The high wooden palisade wall looked bare without the usual complement of warriors, and Ravenna sent a prayer to the gods to look after those who had ridden south.