Kruath knew little about Darkhand, but what he did know reassured him. Less inclined to playing the game of politics than other nobles of the city, Darkhand’s focus was on the defence of his city and on getting things done. Right now, knowing what was about to arrive, Kruath could appreciate this.
Kouran Darkhand, Captain of the Black Guard, may have been low-born but as a warrior he was matchless, and serving under his command was something many warriors of Naggarond simultaneously feared and yearned for. Now, Kruath thought with bitterness, it would likely be the first and only time he had a chance to impress the captain. The thought excited him and brought rage in equal measure. He embraced the feeling. It would not do to underestimate Valkia and her forces. There would be no escape here as there had been at Volroth. Here, it would be victory or death. Retreat was not a route they could take.
Captain Darkhand turned from his vigilant post at the wall and let his sharp eyes roam up and down the line of warriors. Kruath watched his commander’s every move with intense concentration. For over a thousand years Darkhand had battled and fought, protected and defended. He was a living legend.
When he spoke, Kruath noted that it was not in the usual arrogant tones of other commanders under whom he had served. He did not raise his voice or roar in strident defiance. Kruath watched the infamous warrior with something approaching fascination. He forces us to strain in order to hear him, he noted. As if the words are not for us, but for some higher power. He does not ask. He expects simply to be obeyed.
‘These walls have stood since we claimed this land as our own and you will hold them. In the name of the Witch King you will hold them. Look beyond the walls, my brethren. The enemy comes,’ Darkhand said. He spoke with eloquent ease, choosing his words with care. ‘An enemy that dares the wrath of the druchii. An enemy that thinks it cannot know fear. But mark this, each and every one of you, mark my words. They will be stopped here. They will die here, every last one of them, before they see the inside of Naggarond. If your death is required for our victory, then I expect it of you.’
Darkhand’s words stirred loyalty and determination in Kruath’s gut and he let his pride swell. Death in defence of Naggarond. It was no more than was expected of any of them and yet the captain managed to remind them, without speaking the actual words aloud, that any signs of cowardice would result in swift retribution, undoubtedly at the end of the serrated dagger he wore at his waist.
Overhead, the skies darkened and flickered with unnatural light. Forks of scarlet lightning split the heavens and a hot wind tainted with the stink of blood and iron washed across the walls. A few fat, black drops of rain pattered off the parapet and Kruath tightened his grip on the weapon in his hand in anticipation. The army approached. Its very presence was a blight upon the world and the fiends amongst its great host were sustained by its dark power.
Kruath felt his blood stir at the captain’s simple but powerful choice of words. An exultant cry rose up in his chest and burst forth, only to be lost amongst the cheers of his fellow dark elves. When the noise settled once again, Darkhand continued.
‘The animals of the north do not think. They have no great scheme or plan.’ Darkhand’s lithe form paced up and down the line as he spoke. ‘They will come at us with mindless savagery and beat themselves bloody on our walls. There will be no glory here. I expect you to butcher them like the vermin they are.’ He stopped his pacing and his eyes roamed once more. They flickered briefly over Kruath, who inclined his head in acknowledgement of his commander’s gaze. ‘Nothing more, nothing less. If you are still living when we cleanse this filth from our lands, then you can consider that your greatest accolade.’
There was the pause of a heartbeat and the captain finished his speech with four words that caught light like a match to a fuse.
‘For the Witch King.’
The words began as a murmur, then became a chant and then, finally, a crescendo of screaming determination. Kruath bellowed the words at the top of his voice, believing in them absolutely. Then, as suddenly as the words had come, as thunder rocked the heavens and the boom of drums echoed across the hills, a silence fell across the walls.
In that infinite moment, in the calm before the storm, Kruath experienced a sensation of complete and utter clarity. Every sound and every movement stilled. It was as though time ground to a halt for a single, perfect second. The warrior’s eyes closed briefly and he allowed himself the luxury of drinking in the heady purity of the moment. The silence was unnatural. In that moment, Kruath came to know one thing with absolute certainty.
I will die before I let this city fall.
The horde was vast, an unbroken line of howling madness that stretched as far as the eye could see. Gangs of fur-clad barbarians jostled with clans of horned beastmen and canine-headed monsters. Regiments of black and red armoured Chaos warriors strode beside drooling, slack-jawed trolls and ruddy-skinned ogres. Shapeless amalgams of flesh, bone and iron crawled and skittered through the throng and monstrous hounds ran ahead, snapping and howling in the rising storm.
Through and over the army strode mottled giants, their lanky, pot-bellied bodies swaddled with rags and sheathed in plates of black iron. They bristled with hooks, blades and barbs, wielding clubs and hammers the size of wagons. Giants were rare in Naggaroth, and to see so many together was staggering. Huge, shaggy mammoths hauled twisted towers behind them, their blunt skulls shielded by wedges of studded armour. Mobs of masked warriors crowded the howdahs on their backs thrashing drums of stretched skin and offering incomprehensible adulation to their mad gods. One such beast was crowned with knotted brass and a huge icon of a stylised skull. Beneath that vile sigil a hulking brute butchered men and elves, his colossal axe claiming their heads and his meaty paws pulling hearts from chests. All were cast into a living, crimson fire that danced beneath an eightfold star, while tumbling from the sky were horrors in the shape of shrieking harpies, soaring in the updrafts of the hot storm wind.
The horde did not stop to make camp, did not break its stride as it raced towards the walls, such was its fury. Kruath watched as the open ground between the army and the city vanished and then thousands of dark elf arrows spoke in unison. A blizzard of bolts descended upon the blood-mad horde. With so many targets it was impossible to miss. Beasts and men died in their droves, bodies riddled with black-fletched shafts. Their demise did nothing to halt the stampede and the furious charge never faltered. The dead and dying were trampled beneath its feet, and countless voices rose in a howl of defiance that matched the rising storm in its fury. A second volley of bolts slaughtered just as many with just as little an effect. Amongst the churning mass of bodies Kruath spotted, here and there, a number of absurdly long ladders.
The marauder frontrunners of the Chaos army planted the feet of the ladders in the barren earth. A press of bodies pushed them forward and carried them aloft, bridging the distance swiftly. Darkhand readied his weapon, and in response to a sign from their commander, a veritable forest of spears and halberds presented themselves. From between the jagged crenellations Kruath saw a crude frame of bones and knotted wood rising to meet the wall where he stood. Kruath firmly planted his shield and leaned his weight forward in order to receive the enemy. The ladder slammed into place and a hacked and mutilated body jerked at its top, its empty, bloodied eye sockets staring accusingly. The defenders of the Tower of Volroth had been returned to Naggarond in a gruesome manner. The marauders had taken the corpses, lashing them to their siege-ladders, and were now dangling them across the parapets, in a jerky, stinking display of grisly puppetry. Several spearmen levered the ladder from the wall, but more were clattering into place all the time, each decorated with their own trophy designed to cause terror amongst the defenders.