He reached up to rub his shoulder in an effort to ease the ache growing in it, and swore under his breath as his armour snagged painfully. He still wasn’t used to it. He didn’t know why he’d accepted the commission into the Reiksguard. The Volkers had always been staunch Feuerbachists, rather than supporters of the Holswig-Schliestein family. ‘Up Talabecland,’ as his father had often used to say, loudly and at inappropriate times. Then, what did political divides matter when the wolf was at the door of the world?
Volker swept his sword clean on his defeated opponent’s furs, nose wrinkling in disgust. As he sheathed his blade, he thought again of Goetz and Dubnitz. He wished they were here. Bravery had come easily in their presence. They had been like him – normal men, trapped in abnormal times. A dying breed, he thought, as he looked back at the column as it advanced down the boulevard, Valten at its head.
He caught the other man’s gaze and nodded once, briskly. Valten returned the nod and raised his gore-stained hammer, rousing his men to the march once more. He spoke of the Temple of Ulric as if it were a source of salvation, rather than a place to make a final stand, and his words instilled courage and drove back fatigue. He wasn’t like Volker. Volker had been wrong, before. He saw that now. Valten was something else – not just a man, but an idea made real. Hope given form, and authority. The Empire made flesh. Abnormal times bred abnormal men. Only gods and monsters could survive what was coming, Volker thought. Where that left him, or any of the rank and file, exactly, he didn’t know, and didn’t care to think about.
He shook himself, and looked at his men. ‘Let’s go. We’ve got half the Ulricsmund between us and the temple, and the wolves of the north are snapping at our heels. It’ll take the Three-Eyed King time to get them all moving in the same direction, but I’d like to be behind a cannon when that happens. Brunner, take point.’ The big man nodded and moved forwards through the smoke, along the ruined boulevard, falchion in one hand and a pistol in the other. Volker had heard somewhere that Brunner had been a bounty-hunter, before the natural order had been overturned. Whatever he’d been, he was a born scout – stealthy, sneaky and utterly vicious.
Volker and the others followed as Brunner loped ahead of them. Volker kept his eyes on the surrounding buildings and alleyways, alert for anything that might signal an attack. He could hear the sound of battle echoing up from the city around him, and the air stank of a thousand fires. A mass of men as large as the one behind him was bound to attract attention. It wasn’t a question of if an attack would come, but when – not to mention what form it would take.
Besides attacks by random warbands of northmen, out for slaughter and pillage, the column had had to deal with worse things. The creature calling itself Count Mordrek had been but the first. Others, champions of the Dark Gods all, had hurled themselves at Valten out of the press of battle as he led his men through the reeling city. Volker could not help but keep a tally, for some of those names were nightmares which had frightened him as a child: names like Ragnar Painbringer, Sven Bloody-Hand, Engra Deathsword, Vygo Thrice-Tainted and Surtha Lenk. Names to conjure with, warlords and near-daemons, all of whom seemed intent on taking Valten’s head before he laid eyes on Archaon.
Whatever their names or titles, Valten fought them all. Ghal Maraz took a steady toll of shattered skulls and broken bones, and through it all, the light within him shone brighter and brighter. It was as if whatever force drove him was growing stronger. Vashnar the Tormentor fell on the steps of the Middenplatz, and a burly, boisterous warrior calling himself Khagras the Horse-lord was left broken in the ruins of the Dragon Ale Brewery. The most recent of them, Eglixus, self-proclaimed Executioner of Trechagrad, had fallen mewling and broken-backed in the dust of the Freiburg, as Valten led his men steadily towards the Temple of Ulric.
Volker heard a whistle from up ahead. Brunner appeared out of the smoke, his taciturn features pale beneath his helm. ‘How many?’ Volker said.
Brunner held up three fingers. ‘Three,’ he rasped.
‘Three what? Three dozen? Three hundred?’
The former bounty hunter shook his head. ‘Just three.’ He looked at Volker, and then past him. Volker turned, as Valten rode towards them.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Three men,’ Volker said. He looked up at Valten. ‘Do you want us to go ahead?’ he asked, even as he prayed that the other man would say no.
Valten shook his head. ‘No.’ He smiled, and for a moment, it was as if something older and infinitely more savage looked out at the world from behind his eyes. ‘No, I think they are waiting for me.’ He turned and signalled for the column to wait. Then he urged his horse forwards, into the smoke. Volker looked at Brunner and the others, shook his head and gestured.
‘Well, we bloody well can’t let the Herald of Sigmar ride off alone, now can we?’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Brunner muttered. But he followed Volker as the latter led the others in pursuit of Valten. They didn’t have far to go. They just had to follow the sound of weapons meeting, and the harsh curses of the combatants. A large edifice, once regal, now smashed and defiled, rose up before them through the smoke.
Volker stifled a gasp as he recognised the Temple of Verena. The dome of the roof had been cracked wide open, and what appeared to be a Norscan longboat now rose from it. How it had got there, Volker couldn’t imagine. The wide avenue before the steps was littered with bodies in the livery of three provinces, all buried beneath clouds of humming flies. The bodies were already beginning to bloat and burst, as if they had been out in the sun for days, rather than hours. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, and tried to control the surge of bile that suddenly filled his throat.
Two men duelled amid the heaps of bodies. One was a monster of a man, clad in black, ruined armour, wielding a triple-headed flail. The other, a hairy northman wearing battered armour and more skulls than any self-respecting human ought, fought with a Norscan longsword and a heavy kite shield. They paid no heed to the newcomers, seemingly occupied with their duel.
‘They’ve been fighting for just hours,’ a languid voice said. Volker’s spine itched as the words reached his ears. For the first time, he noticed the golden-haired man sprawled across the steps of the temple, a polished shield propped up beside him and his feet crossed on the broken body of a priest of Verena. The man was inordinately handsome. Too handsome. Volker felt something in him twitch away from the sheer, monstrous beauty of the speaker.
‘You’ll have to forgive Valnir and Wulfrik,’ the man continued. There was a glow about him, as if thousands of fireflies were flitting about his head and shoulders. ‘They are otherwise occupied. Selfish brutes that they are, they have little thought for the boredom such games inflict on others.’ He smiled widely and sat up. ‘Lucky for you, I am unengaged.’
Valten straightened. He laid his hand on the hammer where it lay balanced across his saddle, as if to calm the ancient weapon. The man on the steps frowned, and Volker felt his guts turn to ice. ‘Are you not going to ask who I am?’ the man said.
‘I know who you are, Geld-Prince. Sigvald, boy-prince of an extinct tribe, monster, cannibal and daemon.’ The strange lights surrounding the other man seemed to dim as Valten spoke, and when he took hold of Ghal Maraz’s haft and lifted the weapon, the lights faded entirely, leaving only a ghostly afterglow.