When the two forces collided, it was with a sick, hard smash that sent the bodies of both orc and human flying. Bretonnian warhorses were huge, powerful beasts, and their whirling hooves were quite capable of cracking skulls and snapping ribcages. The greenskins were battle-hardened monsters, each of them far larger than a man and with corded, muscled limbs that hurled axes and mauls around with plate-denting force.
Leoncoeur crashed through the hard glut of the toughest of the orcs, laying about him in flamboyant sweeps of his blade. He rode his mount with imperious perfection, compensating for every buck and rear. As the greenskins clawed for him, he laid waste to them, hammering with all the pent-up strength of the long ride.
Jhared remained close by, working his own blade furiously. ‘For the dead of Quenelles!’ he thundered, his lank hair thrashing around his un-helmed head. ‘For the dead of Lyonesse!’
Every knight of the company fought in the same way – with a cold anger generated by the many humiliations suffered by their realm. They were devastating on the charge, as pure and violent as the cascades around them. The orcs died in droves, and soon the rivulets at their feet ran black with blood.
Leoncoeur wheeled his steed around and thrust his sword point-first into the open maw of a slavering greenskin. He ripped the blade free in time to meet the swiped challenge of another, and a dull clang of metal on metal rang out. Two swift parries, and he had dispatched the next challenger.
The impetus of the orc attack was already failing. They began to retreat back up the gorge, desperate now to escape the close-serried Bretonnian onslaught. There was no escape for them that way, though, for the pegasi plummeted from the clouds, drawn by the scents and sounds of battle. Even without riders they were deadly, swooping low to lash out at the stumbling herd of greenskins.
‘Let none escape!’ shouted Leoncoeur, riding down a stumbling orc and spurring his mount towards the next. The Bretonnians loosened their formation as they gained momentum. Gilles de Lyonesse, a rider with a love of the chase that exceeded even his hunt-obsessed brethren, broke clear with a small band of like-minded brother-knights and galloped up the gorge’s flanks, aiming to cut off the rearmost greenskins. Leoncoeur and the main body of warriors advanced up the centre, cutting into the heart of the orc herd. The pegasi continued to dive and swoop, bludgeoning the slow-moving greenskins with impunity, and so the orcs were soon assailed from all sides.
The remainder of the fighting was little better than a slaughter, with the last of the creatures surrounded by a ring of stamping horses. Leoncoeur killed the last orc himself, as was his right, and lifted its severed head high in triumph. Gore slopped in a torrent from its serrated neck-stump, mingling with the deluge of crimson foam below.
‘First blood of the crusade!’ he shouted, and his knights returned the cry with genuine gusto. After so long suffering from the grinding cold, it was good to indulge in their proper calling again.
De Lyonesse soon returned, and the slower-moving infantry of the baggage train caught up, hauling their wagons over the broken ground.
In normal times the peasants would have been employed to drag the bodies of the slain for burning, for allowing the corpse of a greenskin to moulder in the open air was asking for trouble. On this occasion, though, Leoncoeur suffered none of them to waste time. The way was cleared for the passage of the largest wains, and the bodies of fallen knights were retrieved and buried with all honour, but no funeral pyres were lit.
Less than two hours later, the cavalry column was on the move again, snaking higher up into the mouth of Axebite Pass. The clouds above did not relent, but poured out their violence ever more intensely, washing the blood from the rocks and sending it tumbling down the throat of the killing ground.
Leoncoeur let his knights pass first, led by de Lyonesse, who had started singing hymns of praise to the Lady for deliverance. The old king remained at the site where he had slain the last of the greenskins, lost in thought.
‘You were right,’ said Jhared, nudging his mount past Leoncoeur’s and preparing for the final push towards the summit. ‘First blood. A good omen.’
For a moment, Leoncoeur did not reply. The severed head of his victim lay on the near-frozen earth, gazing blankly up at the heavens. ‘I do not recognise them,’ he said at last.
Jhared looked down at the piles of corpses, then back at Leoncoeur, then shrugged. ‘They look much the same as any I’ve killed.’
Leoncoeur leaned down in the saddle, poring over the piled heaps of the slain. Jhared’s confidence was misplaced – the orcs’ wargear was like nothing a greenskin south of the mountains would have worn. Leoncoeur had travelled far across the Old World and had fought in a dozen different lands. The different tribes of greenskin fought amongst themselves even more than they warred with other races. Each strain had their own territory, which was only breached on the rare occasion when an exceptional warlord would unite them into the rare explosions of aggression that gouged trails of carnage across the civilised lands.
This was not one of those occasions. The slain orcs’ wargear was in poor shape, and their armour – to the extent it could be called that – hung from their bodies in tatters. It was clear that many of them had been wounded before the fighting had even begun, and their bulk was far less than it should have been.
‘They did not come here to attack us,’ said Leoncoeur.
Jhared laughed. ‘Then why were they here?’
‘They are from north of the mountains. The Drakwald, I’d warrant. They have been driven south.’ Leoncoeur looked steadily at Jhared, letting him be in no doubt what had happened. ‘They were fleeing. Whatever waits for us, it has cleansed the forest of orcs.’
Jhared started to laugh again, but the sound trailed off. He forced a smile. ‘The forest can never be cleansed.’
Now that the fervour of battle had faded, Leoncoeur could reflect on how poorly the greenskins had resisted. He had never seen them give up, not so completely, not so quickly.
‘They were hunted,’ he said, finding himself strangely appalled by the thought. ‘They were scared.’
‘Of us.’
Leoncoeur smiled wryly. ‘Believe that if you wish.’ He kicked his horse’s flanks, and it began to move again. ‘I do not.’
He looked up, to where his knights wound their way ever northwards, passing under the night-dark shadow of Talareaux. It looked like they were snaking their way into the underworld.
Perhaps that is so, he mused. In which case, the Lady willing, we will soon set it alight.
The sun had only just risen, and its light was grey and diffuse, barred by the heavy layer of cloud that had hung over Altdorf for weeks. The parade ground was sunk into a kind of foggy twilight, part-masking the movements of the men out on the sand.
Helborg barely remembered the last time he had seen a clear sky. Ever since the first stirrings of the hosts in the north, the heavens had been masked by a grimy curtain, washing all the colour out of the world and plunging it into a dreary fog. Everything was dank, wet, sopping and grime-encrusted. Under such a constant weight of oppression, it was easy enough to believe that the gods had deserted the world of mortals at last, and that the little remaining light and heat was draining out of reality one sodden day at a time.