‘The little flea’, Volker knew, was Mannfred von Carstein. Even thinking the name caused him to shudder. Still, on the whole, it was better than going north with the rest of the lads. He’d take the dead over daemons any day. Nonetheless, he couldn’t repress a second shudder when he looked at the distant wall. He caught Leitdorf looking at him and stiffened his spine. As terrifying as Mannfred von Carstein was, he was over there, and Leitdorf, unfortunately, was right here. Leitdorf snorted and turned back to Gormann.
‘Volkmar isn’t coming back,’ he said.
‘Did you think he would?’ Gormann asked. ‘No, he’d have torn those walls down if he’d been able. It was a fool’s errand, and he knew it.’
‘He had to try,’ Leitdorf said softly.
‘No, he bloody didn’t.’ Gormann shook his shaggy head. ‘He let his anger blind him, and now we have to muddle through without him. Stubborn old fool.’
‘Friend pot, have you met cousin kettle?’ Leitdorf asked.
Gormann looked at the knight and frowned, but only for a moment. He guffawed and shook his head. ‘I always forget that you have a sense of humour buried under that scowl, Hans.’
Volker watched as the two men – two of the most powerful, if not influential, in the Empire – continued to discuss the unpleasantness just across the border and decided, for the fifth time in as many minutes, to keep his opinions to himself, just as his mother had counselled. ‘Keep quiet, head down, ears perked, nose to the trail,’ she’d said. A hunting metaphor, of course. Big one for hunting was mumsy, big one for the blood sports and the trophies and such.
Blood had always made Volker queasy. He licked his lips and looked longingly at the jug of mulled wine that Leitdorf clutched loosely in one hand. Occasionally, the Grand Master would refill his goblet, or Gormann’s. Volker had not been offered so much as a taste. Another snub, of course. A sign of his new commander’s displeasure. Mustn’t complain, he thought.
As the wizard and the warrior conversed, Volker kept himself occupied by examining his new post from the view the parapet afforded. He’d heard stories of Heldenhame as a boy, but to see it in the flesh, as it were, was something else again.
At its inception, Heldenhame had been little more than a modest bastion, composed of a stone tower and a wooden palisade. Now, however, a century later, Heldenhame Keep was the grandest fortress in Talabecland. The old stone tower had been torn down and replaced by a castle that was many times larger, and the wooden palisade had been discarded in favour of heavy stone walls. Within the walls and spreading outwards from the castle was a bustling city, filled with noise and commerce. It was a grand sight, for all that it still bore the marks of the greenskin tide that had sought to overwhelm it the year previous.
The western wall was still under repair from that incident. Volker watched the distant dots of workmen reinforcing and repairing the still-crippled span. It was the only weak point in the fortress’s defences, but such repairs couldn’t be rushed. Volker knew that much from his studies. As he examined the wall, he saw what looked to be a tavern near it. His thirst returned and he licked his lips. ‘Worried about the western span, captain?’ Leitdorf asked, suddenly. Volker, shaken from his reverie, looked around guiltily.
‘Ah, no, sir, Grand Master,’ he said hastily, trying to recall what sort of salute one gave the commander of a knightly order. Leitdorf gazed at him disdainfully.
‘You should be,’ he grunted. ‘You’ll be stationed there. You’re dismissed, Volker. I trust you can find your quarters and introduce yourself to the garrison without me holding your hand?’
‘Ah, yes, I believe so, sir. Grand Master,’ Volker said. Leitdorf turned, and Volker, relieved and dying for a drink, scurried away.
Ungrim Ironfist, king of Karak Kadrin, ran his thick, scarred fingers across the map of beaten bronze and gilded edges that lay before him on the stone table. The map was a thing of painstaking artifice and careful craftsmanship, and it was as lovely in its way as any silken tapestry or a portrait done by a master’s hand.
Ironfist, in contrast, was a thing of slabs and edges and could, in no way, shape or form be called lovely. Even for a dwarf, the Slayer King was built on the heavy side, his thick bones weighed down by layers of hard-earned muscle, and his face like a granite shelf carved sharply and suddenly by an avalanche. His beard and hair were dyed a startling red and, as ever, he wore a heavy cloak of dragon-scale over his broad shoulders.
His craggy features settled into a taciturn expression as he stared at the map. It wasn’t alone on the table. There were others stacked in a neat pile near to hand, and opposite them a number of metal tubes, containing statements and reports culled from every watch-post and lookout tower for a hundred miles in every direction. Ironfist had read them all and more than once. So often, in fact, that he knew what each one said by heart.
More reports were added by the day, as rangers and merchants brought word to the Slayer Keep from the furthest edges of the dwarf empire. These too Ironfist committed to memory. None of what he learned was comforting.
There was a strange murk upon the dust-winds that rolled west from the Dark Lands over the eastern mountains, and the sky over that foul land was rent by sickly trails of green, as if the moon were weeping poisonous tears upon the blighted sores that covered the skin of the world. Plagues such as the world had not seen in a thousand years were loose in the lands of men, and worse things than plagues, too. Devils and beasts ran riot in the Empire, and traders returning from Tilea, Estalia and Araby brought word that it was just as bad in those lands. The vile rat-things had burst from their tunnels in unprecedented numbers, and subsumed whole city-states and provinces in the same way they had the holds of his people so long ago.
The Badlands were full to bursting of greenskins; the clangour of the battles fought between the orc tribes carried for miles in all directions, and as soon as one ended, another began. Soon, as was inevitable, they would flood into the mountains and the lands beyond, hunting for new enemies. But this time they would do so in unprecedented numbers: in their millions, rather than their thousands.
However, that was as nothing compared to word from the north, where strange lights writhed across the horizon and arcane storms raged across the lands. Daemon packs hunted the high places and barbarians gathered in the valleys as long-dormant volcanoes belched smoke and the earth shook as if beneath the tread of phantom armies.
Ironfist had, in all his centuries, never witnessed such a multitude of troubles, all occurring at once. Bad times came and went, like storms. They washed across the mountains and faded away with the seasons. But this was like several storms, rising and boiling together all at once, as if to wipe away the world. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts of the miasma of foreboding that clung to them.
Ironfist tapped a point on the map. ‘What word from the Sylvanian border? Are the rumours true?’ he asked the dwarf sitting across from him. Snorri Thungrimsson had served at his king’s right hand for more years than could be easily counted. He was old now, and the fat braids of beard that were tucked into the wide leather belt about his midsection were as white as the morning frost on the high mountain peaks. But he still served as his king’s hearthwarden and senior advisor. It was Thungrimsson who collected and organised the diverse streams of information that came into the hold from messengers, scouts and spies, and readied it for Ironfist’s study.