Khazrak’s good eye met his own. The beastman blinked, just once, and stilled his thrashing, as if in acceptance of what was about to transpire. Then Khazrak snarled, and the runefang descended, piercing the creature’s good eye and sinking into his brain. Khazrak’s hooves drummed on the ground for a moment, and then were still. Todbringer leaned against the hilt of the runefang until he felt the tip sink into the mud beneath Khazrak’s skull. ‘This time, stay dead,’ he wheezed.
The gathered beastmen were silent. The Drakwald was quiet. But Boris Todbringer was not. He rose wearily, his strength gone, only stubbornness remaining. He was wounded, weakened, and surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of beastmen. He would die here.
But he had won.
Todbringer tilted his head back and laughed the laugh of a man who has shed the last of life’s shackles. For the first time in a long time, he felt no weight on his heart. He had won. Let the world burn, if it would, for he had made his mark, and done what he must.
He looked down at Khazrak, spat a gobbet of blood onto the death-slackened features of his old enemy, and ripped his sword free, even as the closest of the beastmen began to edge forwards, growling vengefully. He was going to die, but by Ulric, they’d remember him, when all was said and done.
‘You want the world?’ Boris Todbringer growled. Clasping his runefang in both hands, the Elector Count of Middenheim, supreme ruler of Middenland and the Drakwald, raised the blade. He smiled as the enemy closed in.
‘You’ll have to earn it.’
PART ONE
Rock of Ages
Autumn 2527
ONE
Gregor Martak, Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic, took a pull from the bottle of wine and handed it off to the man standing beside him atop the battlements of the Temple of Ulric. The temple, fashioned as a fortress within a fortress, dominated the Ulricsmund and the city of Middenheim itself, and was the highest point of the Fauschlag. Martak’s companion – clad in the dark armour of a member of the Knights of the White Wolf, albeit much battered and in need of a good polishing – took the bottle grudgingly, after the wizard shook it invitingly. Martak scratched at his tangled beard and looked out over the city. From the temple battlements one could see further than anywhere else in Middenheim, almost to the ends of the horizon. And what Martak saw now chilled him to the bone.
Rolling banks of black cloud had swept in from the north, and hung over the city, blotting out the sun. Every torch and brazier in the city was lit in a futile effort to hold back the dark. Sorcerous lightning rent the clouds. The crackling sheets of lurid energy lit the streets below with kaleidoscopic colours, and mad shadows danced and capered on every surface. But the darkness was no barrier to what now approached the city.
The pounding of drums had been audible to Martak and the rest of the city for some hours before the arrival of the horde which now seethed around the base of the Fauschlag in an endless black tide. The wind had carried the noise of the drums, as well as the guttural roars and screams of the damned who made up the approaching army. Flocks of crows had darkened the rust-coloured sky, and the roots of the mountain upon which Middenheim stood had trembled.
The front-runners of the horde had emerged first, from the edges of the forest to the city’s north. Trees were uprooted or shattered where they stood, the groans and cracks of their demise joining the cacophony of the army’s arrival as they were battered aside by hulking monsters the likes of which Martak had hoped never to see. Behind the savage behemoths came numberless tribesmen from the far north clad in filthy furs, armoured warriors and monstrous mutants. They poured out of the forest like an unceasing tide of foulness, and the thunder of the drums was joined by the blaring of war-horns and howled war-songs, all of it rising and mingling into a solid roar of noise that set Martak’s teeth on edge and made his ears ache.
Now, the horde stood arrayed before Middenheim, awaiting gods alone knew what signal to launch their assault. Thousands of barbaric banners flapped and clattered in the hot breeze, and monstrous shapes swooped through the boiling sky. Beastmen capered and howled before the silent ranks of armoured warriors. The horde’s numbers had swelled throughout the day, and even the most sceptical of Middenheim’s defenders had realised that this was no mere raiding band, come to burn and pillage before fading away like a summer storm. No, this was the full might of the north unbound, and it had come to crack the spine of the world.
‘I hate to say I told you so, Axel, but… well,’ Martak grunted. He swept back his grimy fur cloak and gestured with one long, tattooed arm towards the walls beyond which the foe gathered in such numbers as to shake the world. Or so it seemed, at least, to Martak. His companion, despite the evidence of his senses, didn’t agree.
Axel Greiss, Grand Master of the Knights of the White Wolf and commander of the Fellwolf Brotherhood, used the edge of his white fur cloak to wipe the mouth of the bottle clean, and took a tentative swig. ‘What is this swill?’ he asked.
‘A bottle of Sartosan Red. Some fool had hidden it in the privy,’ Martak grunted.
Greiss smacked his lips, made a face, and handed the bottle back. ‘It’s a rabble out there, wizard. Nothing more. You’ve spent too much time amongst the milksops of the south if that’s your idea of a horde. I’ve seen hordes. That is no horde.’ He sniffed. ‘Middenheim has withstood worse. It will withstand this.’ He gestured dismissively. ‘Ulric’s teeth, they’ve even chased off the ratmen for us.’
Martak took another pull from the bottle. ‘Have they?’ The skaven who had been besieging the city prior to the arrival of the horde had abandoned their siege-lines, like scavengers fleeing before a larger predator. Some of the ratmen had gone south, Martak knew, while others had surely scampered into the tunnels below the Fauschlag. Not that he could get anyone to listen to him on that last score. It was Altdorf all over again. What good was being the Supreme Patriarch if no one listened to him? Then, it wasn’t as if the Colleges of Magic still existed, he thought bitterly.
Greiss, as if echoing Martak’s thoughts, eyed the Amber wizard disdainfully. ‘They’re gone, wizard. Fled, like the cowardly vermin they were. Do you see them out there?’
‘Doesn’t mean they aren’t there,’ Martak grunted. It was an old argument. He had ordered scouts sent into the depths of the Fauschlag, despite the vigorous protestations of Greiss and his fellow commanders. What they had reported had only confirmed his fears of an attack from below. The skaven hadn’t fled. They’d merely given over the honour of the assault to Archaon. No, the ratmen were massing in the depths, preparing to assault Middenheim from below. He could feel it in his bones.
‘Doesn’t mean they are, either,’ Greiss said. He shook his head. ‘And if they are, what of it? Middenheim stands, wizard. Let the hordes break themselves on our walls, if they wish. They will fail, as they have done every time before. As long as the Flame of Ulric burns, Middenheim stands.’ Martak made to hand him the bottle, but Greiss waved it aside. ‘Stay up here and drink the day away if you will, wizard. Some of us have duties to attend to.’