He fought to remain conscious, even as a hot river of blood ran over his own armour. As the two of them whirled and spun earthwards, Karl Franz caught a blurred view of the entire battlefield. He saw the limitless tides of the North hacking their way through what remained of his forces. He saw the deathly advance of the Sylvanians from the east, covering the Revesnecht valley in a veil of darkness. The rain hammered down, shrouding it all in a bleak curtain of silver-grey, drowning the Imperial colours in a sea of plague-infested mud.
He reached out, as if he could grasp it all in his fist and somehow reverse the tide of war.
I have failed, he thought, and the realisation was like poison in his stomach. There will be no return from this. I have failed.
Even as the earth raced up towards him, his pain-filled mind recoiled at the very idea. He felt the great presences of the past gazing down at him, lamenting his great negligence. He saw the stern faces of Magnus the Pious, of Mandred, of Sigmar himself, each one filled with accusation.
I was the custodian, he thought, his mind filled with anguish. The duty passed to me.
The foul wind whistled past him. Deathclaw was struggling to fly on, to evade the heart of the Chaos horde, but his pinions were broken, and with his last, blurred sight Karl Franz saw that they would not make it.
Karl Franz did not feel himself slip from the saddle, dragged clear by his heavy armour. He never saw Deathclaw try to retrieve him, before the griffon finally collapsed to the earth in a tangle of snapped bones and crushed plumage. He never even felt the hard thud of impact, his face rammed deep into the thick mud even as his helm toppled from his bloodied head.
His last thought, echoing in his mind like an endless mockery, was the one that had tortured him from the first, as soon as the vampire’s corrupted blade had pierced his armour and rendered the outcome of the duel inevitable.
I have failed.
From the beleaguered western flank to the shattered east, every Empire soldier saw the Emperor fall. A vast ripple of dismay shuddered through the ranks. They all saw the skeletal dragon tear Deathclaw from the skies, casting the war-griffon down amid a cloud of gore-stained feathers. They all saw the creature valiantly try to drag itself clear of the battlefield, fighting against its horrific wounds. For a moment, they dared to believe that it might reach the precarious safety of the stockade again, and that even if the Emperor was sorely wounded that he might still live. For a moment, all eyes turned skywards, hoping, praying fervently, demanding the salvation of their liege-lord.
When the griffon’s flight at last dipped to earth, still half a mile short of safety and surrounded by the raging hordes of the North, those hopes died. They all saw Karl Franz fall from the saddle, dragged down into the mire, far from any possible rescue. They saw the war-griffon follow him down, the proud beast dragged to earth as if weighed with chains.
A wild howl erupted from the Chaos armies. Even the undead, now fighting their way west through turbulent formations of Skaelings, paused in their assault. The remaining Empire formations buckled, folding in on themselves as if consumed from within. The weakest soldiers began to run, tripping over bodies half-buried in the mud. The stoutest detachments fought on, though their positions were now exposed by the cowardice of lesser men.
The undead dragon ran rampant, sweeping low over the Empire lines, scooping defenders up in its emaciated claws and hurling their broken bodies far across the plain. The other fallen vampires crashed into contact, borne by monstrous creations whose eyes smouldered with forge-fires and whose hooves were lined with beaten iron. Ranged against them were the last of Huss’s zealots, a horrifically diminished band, and what remained of Talb’s hollowed-out forces. The Reiksguard still fought on, guarding their fallen captain, but were separated from the rest of the Empire army by a swirling tempest of daemons and fanatical fighters. Even Mecke’s western flank now crumbled, its defenders panicking and turning on their tyrannical commander. The army of Heffengen finally subsided, sinking into the morass.
Schwarzhelm fought like a man possessed by the spirit of Sigmar, single-handedly accounting for scores of Kurgan scalps. Huss was scarcely less brutal, shouting out war-hymns as he laid into the enemy with his warhammer. For a time, those two warriors defied the encroaching tides, bolstered by the vital energy of Valten and Ghal Maraz. Amid a sea of seething corruption, the lights of faith endured for a little while.
But even that could not last. Schwarzhelm fought to within a hundred yards of where Helborg had been felled, but as the Empire formations around him melted away, he was forced to turn back at last. Gathering what remnants he could, he hacked his way south, veering east as he reached the curve of the Revesnecht. He, Huss and Valten were harried all the way, though the pursuit faded once the prize of Heffengen itself loomed on the southern horizon.
A few other scraps escaped the carnage – a kernel of the Reiksguard cut their way free, bearing the sacred Imperial standard and taking control of the army’s baggage trains before they could be looted. Many of the wagons were set aflame to prevent the enemy taking on fresh supplies, but a few were driven hastily south. The remnants were joined by the shattered Reiklander companies, plus any outriders from the Ostermarkers and Talabheimers who managed to escape the slaughter.
For those that could not escape, the end was swift and brutal. Champions of Chaos stalked across the war-scorched battlefield, breaking the necks of any who still lived. Spines were ripped out of the corpses and draped over the shoulders of the victorious. Daemonic grotesques capered and belched amid the charnel-debris, sucking the marrow from the bones and spewing it at one another. Though the greater daemon had been slain, its lesser spawn survived in droves, sustained by the crackling magicks animating the air.
The last to quit the field was the spectral Vlad von Carstein, whose presence at the conclusion of the battle remained as enigmatic as his arrival. His undead host had reaped a terrible toll on the Chaos army’s eastern extremity, but after the Empire contingents had scattered, they were exposed to the full force of the victors’ wrath. Whole regiments of skeletons and zombies were smashed apart by charging warbands of Kurgan, adding to the tangled heaps of bones already protruding from the blood-rich mud.
It did not take long for their dark commander to give the silent order to withdraw. The winds of death were driven east by the stinking fug of decay, and the black-clad host melted back beyond the riverbank just as mysteriously as they had arrived, their purpose still unclear.
Only one duel of significance remained. Few witnessed its outcome, for a strange vortex of shadow swept suddenly across the skies, its edges as ragged and writhing as a witch’s cloak-hem. The undead dragon tore into the heart of the vortex, its empty eye sockets burning with an eerie green light. Flashes of sudden colour flared from within, as if a whole clutch of battle wizards had been trapped in its dark heart.
At the end of whatever had taken place in that sphere of magicks, the dragon took flight again, lurching as awkwardly as ever over the bleak plain and following the undead army east. Its rider still wore crimson armour, though not the same as earlier, and he carried a severed, fanged head in one gauntlet.
With that, the legions of the dead quit the field, leaving the plaguebearers to scavenge and plunder what remained. A peal of corpulent thunder cracked across the vista, echoing with faint echoes of laughter. The tallymen trudged through the dead and dying, taking note of the contagions they came across on long rolls of mouldering parchment. Insects of every chitinous variety buzzed and skittered across the rows of corpses, seeking out juicy eyeballs and tongues to feast on.