Otto sniffed again. It was not good to be reminded of their rivals for the Urfather’s affections. If Archaon had not been so insistent on the need for an overwhelming, three-pronged attack, he would have preferred to have had no supporting armies at all. ‘Epidemius is foundering, it must be so,’ he said, grudgingly.
‘Wish it not, o my brother,’ chided Ethrac, shifting the cauldron’s eye over a vast crater set within the forest. ‘We will need his daemon-horde. Dharek rides with him, and they tear apart Taal’s city even as we linger here.’
Once again, Otto fancied he could make out infinitesimally small figures struggling across the face of the conjured map-face. It looked like driving rain was hammering against the walls of the rock-bound city. A great swathe of glimmering daemons was assaulting a beleaguered force of mortals. Otto screwed his eyes up, trying to gain a better view. ‘They are winning,’ he murmured.
‘That they are,’ said Ethrac, with some satisfaction. ‘Old allies fade, new allies arrive. Dharek will be at the walls of Altdorf in good time to meet us.’
Otto scratched a pustule on his cheek absently. ‘So many,’ he muttered. ‘Who will take the prize?’
‘Prizes for all,’ said Ethrac. ‘We should shackle Ghurk again – if he spends his strength on gluttony, we shall be late.’
Otto nodded. ‘I shall loop the chains around his neck. He will not be happy.’
Ethrac snapped his fingers, and the map zoomed out again, exposing the whole vast panorama of the Empire. In that instant, it was clear what was happening – the three great arms of the northern host were converging with inexorable, steady progress on the Reikland, smashing aside every obstacle in their path. It was unfolding just as the Everchosen had ordered, and the heart of the Empire was being slowly torn inside out.
‘And the dead?’ asked Otto, remembering Ethrac’s concern at Marienburg.
‘No skeletons here,’ said the sorcerer, sending the boiling visions slopping back into the cauldron. ‘Perhaps they have been seen off.’ He grinned at his brother. ‘Or maybe they turn on the living. What matter? What could stand against the three of us?’
Otto grinned back. Ethrac was right. It helped to be shown the full majesty of the plan. It helped with the nagging doubts that, every so often, snagged in his feverish mind. ‘That is good to see, o my brother,’ he said, clapping Ethrac on the shoulder. ‘So we should be off now.’
‘That we should,’ said Ethrac, gazing around himself wistfully, no doubt speculating what sport he could have had in such a place. ‘Festus will be waiting for us.’
Otto blurted a throaty laugh. He always forgot about Festus, but, in truth, the Leechlord was the pin around which the whole scheme revolved.
‘Then all hastens towards the purpose,’ he said, satisfied.
‘It does,’ said Ethrac. ‘Now fetch our brother, and feed the armies until their stomachs swell.’ He shot Otto a smile of pure, lascivious darkness. ‘Just one more march. That is all. One more.’
The knights of Bretonnia on the march was a sight unequalled in the Old World. Each warrior took with him three or four warhorses, all draped in fine caparisons and marked with the heraldic signs of a hundred different bloodlines. Squires and grooms came with them, and reeves, cooks, heralds, priests and a hundred other officials and servants. A vast train of baggage followed them all, carrying all the supplies and weaponry for a long campaign in the saddle. The whole cavalcade coursed through the countryside in a single, vast column, winding its way east from the fens of Couronne and into the highlands north of the Pale Sisters range.
Leoncoeur rode at the head of the column, pushing the pace hard. He had studied the maps long in the vaults of Couronne while the army had mustered, debating with his counsellors which path to take. Throughout, the mysterious Gilles le Breton had held his silence, offering neither blessing nor condemnation of the Errantry. Towards the end, exasperated, Leoncoeur had asked him outright what his counsel was.
‘The Lady ordained you,’ le Breton had told him, his green eyes as unfathomable as the sea. ‘I have no part in this.’
Le Breton spoke to him as if he were already dead – a walking ghost, just like so many that had been loosed across the realm.
So Leoncoeur had plotted his own course – south-east, across the highlands of Gisoreux, before descending into the borderlands of Montfort. They would cross the Grey Mountains at Axebite Pass, heading swiftly north and emerging into Reikland south of Altdorf.
That path was not the swiftest, but the news from the wasteland was now unequivocal – Marienburg had been destroyed and daemons loosed across the marshes. There was no profit in getting bogged down in fighting with such creatures when speed was of the essence. Since his vision of the Lady, Leoncoeur’s dreams had become ever more vivid, and he needed no scouts to tell him the scale of the host that was grinding its way east across the lower Empire.
Still, if the Bretonnians could maintain the blistering pace that he had set, the prospect still survived of reaching Sigmar’s city before the enemy had it completely surrounded and beyond hope of rescue. Once clear of the Grey Mountains, the race would truly begin.
For now, they picked their way up from the plains and into the granite highlands. Huge outcrops jutted into the sky on either side of them, pocked and striated from the racing winds. Lush pastures gave way to thinner grassland, littered with chalky boulders.
It was a relief to get away from the low country. The air became fresher as they climbed, rippling the pennants and making the colours flow across the flanks of the steeds. The skies above them never cleared of the oppressive grey mantle they had worn since the coming of Mallobaude, but the rains held, and the worst of the thunder growled away in the far north.
As he rode, Leoncoeur was joined by his lieutenant, Yves Jhared of Couronne, who had fought alongside him on many previous engagements and was as trusted a companion as the king had ever had. Jhared had the flaming red hair and ice-pale skin of a native of Albion, though no one had ever dared to suggest such ancestry to his face.
‘Hail, lord,’ said Jhared, pulling his horse level with Leoncoeur’s. ‘We make good progress.’
‘Needs to be faster,’ Leoncoeur replied, still preoccupied with the pace. With every passing day, the prospect of missing out on the battle loomed a little larger.
Jhared laughed easily. ‘We are the best of the realm. Command greater speed, and we will answer.’
‘I have no doubt of it,’ said Leoncoeur, scouring the skies ahead. The clouds remained blank and unmoving, which troubled him. He had not chosen the route across the Pale Ladies idly, but his hopes had not yet come to fruition.
‘Do you search for spies?’ asked Jhared, half-seriously. ‘Have the Dark Gods turned even the birds of the air?’
Leoncoeur snorted a bitter laugh. ‘Do not jest.’ He inclined his head a little, sniffing the air carefully. ‘But do you not sense them? You disappoint me.’
Jhared looked amused, then uncertain, and peered up into the skies in turn. ‘Pray, what am I looking for?’ he asked, just as the question became superfluous.
Ahead of them, where the land rose steeply towards a forked granite peak, the clouds suddenly swirled, like cream stirred in a pail. Leoncoeur held up his gauntlet, and the column clanked to a halt. He drew himself up in his saddle, turning to address the long train of knights behind him.
‘Stand fast, brothers!’ he cried. ‘You are not the only warriors to answer my summons.’