More marauders were sprinting towards them as Wolff climbed back onto his
horse and hauled Ratboy up behind him. He floored the nearest with a fierce blow
to the side of his head, then charged after the Averlanders.
The pain in Ratboy’s hand was growing quickly. He held it protectively to his
chest, not daring to look at the damage.
“Obermarshall,” cried Wolff, banking his horse from left to right as they
pursued the receding line of Empire troops. “No!”
Ratboy strained to see around his master’s bulky plate armour. He saw
immediately that the situation had worsened. The Averlanders were still
ploughing through the enemy at a fantastic pace, but the marauders were now
massing around them in much greater numbers. Within the space of a few seconds
he saw several of Gryphius’ men torn from their saddles and dragged down into a
fury of hacking, tearing blades. The Obermarshall’s adjutant, Christoff was
riding alongside Wolff when he suddenly jolted back in his saddle, clutching at
his throat. He tumbled from view before Ratboy had chance to see what had killed
him.
Then he saw Gryphius and understood Wolff’s alarmed, cry. The general had
broken away from the main column and was veering off to the centre of the valley
Along with thirty or so of his men he was attempting to make a dash for
Mormius’ command tents. “What’s he doing?” he gasped into Wolff’s ear.
“Risking everything,” grunted the priest, racing after the general. “He’s
forgotten that Raphael’s followers are just a decoy.” He pointed his hammer
north towards a small bedraggled group, still tearing their way towards
Mormius’ tents. “Gryphius thinks he can join them in beheading this invasion.”
He drove his horse even harder. “He’s a damned fool, and he’s going to lead his
whole army to its death.”
Ratboy looked back and saw the truth of his master’s words. The main column
was already faltering and splitting in confusion. The soldiers didn’t know
whether to do as they were ordered—keep making for the citadel, or rally
around their valiant general instead. As the Averlanders floundered, the
marauders tore into them with renewed vigour. Howling obscenities as they dived
into the confused rout.
“Obermarshall,” cried Wolff again, as they closed on the general. “We
must
make for Mercy’s End!”
The general looked back, his eyes bulging with passion and fear. “We can take
them, Wolff,” he called, blasting his flintlock into the face of another
marauder. “I know it! We can reach Mormius!”
The command tents were still several minutes’ ride away, however, when the
sheer volume of howling, spitting marauders slowed Gryphius and his captains to
a canter. The general’s battle cries took on a more desperate tone as the
grotesque shapes pressed around him. The marauders here seemed even more
corrupted and deformed than the others. Ratboy saw men with drooling mouths
gaping in their chests, and gnarled, eyeless beaks where faces should have been.
It was like descending into a nightmarish bestiary.
They had nearly reached Gryphius when the general flopped back in his saddle,
clutching his side with a high-pitched yelp of pain. His horse spun in confusion
and Ratboy saw the thick shaft of a spear embedded in Gryphius’ side.
“Thank Sigmar,” muttered Wolff under his breath.
Gryphius’ officers rallied round him, slashing frantically at the sea of
blades surrounding their wounded general.
“Lead him back to the others,” bellowed Wolff, still racing towards them. As
they neared the crowd around Gryphius, Ratboy saw the terror on the men’s faces.
They were completely encircled. However fiercely they swung their weapons, there
was no way they could hack their way back to the main force. One by one the
knights tumbled into the bristling mass of swords, as the marauders cut away the
legs of their horses and pulled them down into the slaughter.
“Master,” cried Ratboy, as he saw that they too were completely hemmed in.
Countless rows of marauders were swarming around them. “We’re trapped!”
Wolff planted his boot in the face of nearest marauder, grabbing a broadsword
from his flailing hands as he toppled to the floor. “I know,” he grunted,
handing the weapon to Ratboy. “Do something useful.”
As the misshapen figures reached out towards him, Ratboy lashed out with the
crude weapon. Fear gave him strength and his blade was soon slick with blood as
he hewed limbs and parried sword strikes. His mind grew blank as he fought. He
was aware of nothing but the screaming pain in his muscles and his desperate
desire for life. The odds were impossible though. Gradually the wall of vicious,
barbed blades pressed in on them. For every marauder that fell, ten more leapt
to take his place, each more fierce than the last.
Finally with an awful, braying scream, the horse’s legs collapsed beneath it
and Wolff and Ratboy crashed to the ground.
A tremendous roar of victory erupted from the marauders as they saw the
priest drop from view.
Ratboy’s sword flew from his grip as he rolled clear of the thrashing horse.
He wrapped his trembling arms around his head and clamped his eyes shut, waiting
to feel the cool bite of metal, slicing into his flesh.
Heat washed over him instead.
As Ratboy curled into a ball, gibbering incoherent nonsense to himself, he
felt fire rush over him, shrivelling the hairs on his forearms and scorching his
broken fingers. He looked up in confusion to see Wolff kneeling beside him, with
his head lowered in prayer and his gauntleted hands resting calmly on the head
of his warhammer. The light pouring from his flesh was so bright that Ratboy’s
eyes immediately filled with tears. He squinted into the incandescent halo and
laughed in wonder. It was like looking into the sun, but he couldn’t tear his
eyes away. It was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen. Slowly, the
nimbus of light expanded, washing over the confused marauders. As it touched
their flesh they lit up like candles, blossoming in thick white flames that
leapt from their skin and engulfed their flailing limbs. Their cheers of victory
became wails of despair as their eyes exploded, bursting in their sockets with a
series of audible pops.
Ratboy looked down at himself in dismay, expecting to see the flames covering
his own body, but there was just a pleasant heat; no more painful than a fierce
midday sun. Unlike daylight, though, this heat seemed to seep in through his
pores, rushing through his veins and flooding his heart with passion. He leapt
to his feet and flew at the stumbling, burning shapes; tearing into them with
his broken fingers and howling in a voice he could barely recognise. As he
kicked and thumped at the screaming marauders, a phrase came unbidden to his
lips. The words were unfamiliar, but he howled them with such vehemence that his
voice cracked. “Every man hath heard of Sigmar!” he cried, grabbing a knife from
the ground and thrusting it into bellies and faces. “Every man hath learned to
fear His blessed wrath.”
Ratboy gave himself completely to the animal rage and later, he found it
difficult to say how long he had fought, or how many marauders he had butchered.
It always chilled him to consider what might have happened if he had not been
interrupted.
Wolff’s calm voice brought him back. “I think they’ve learned enough, for
now,” said his master, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Ratboy lurched to a halt, looking down at his gore-splattered limbs in
confusion. Then he turned to face the priest. Traces of the holy light were
still streaming from his eyes and, as he smiled, it poured from between his
teeth. All around them the ground was flattened and scorched, as though Sigmar
had sent a comet to smite his foes. Ratboy tried to speak, but his voice was
ruined and he could only emit a pitiful squeak.
Wolff nodded, as though he understood, then gestured to Gryphius’ officers
who were still circling around them. They were leading a riderless horse and as
Wolff jogged towards it, he dragged Ratboy behind him. “We don’t have long,” he
said, mounting the horse and lifting Ratboy up behind him.
Gryphius was slumped over the back of another knight’s horse and as they
raced back towards the main column of troops, Ratboy couldn’t tell whether the
general was alive or dead. Many of his men were clutching wounds of their own
and swaying in their saddles, but as the marauders reeled from Wolff’s holy
fire, the Averlanders saw their one chance for escape and took it. Driving their
exhausted horses forwards, through the charred remains, in a last, desperate
charge.
The righteous fury that had washed over Ratboy gradually receded to reveal an
impressive selection of pains. As he bounced weakly on the back of Wolff’s
horse, he realised that he was covered with dozens of cuts and grazes, but it
was his left hand that worried him most of all: it was little more than a torn
rag of glistening muscle and splintered bone. He gripped his master a little
tighter as they left the radius of Wolff’s blast and crashed back into a wall of
living foes. The knights made no pretence of fighting, heading straight for the
citadel in a desperate rout. Many of them dropped armour and swords as they
charged, hoping to gain a little more speed over the final approach.
The ruin rose up ahead, so close Ratboy felt he could almost touch the
figures watching eagerly from the battlements.
“Ride for your lives,” cried Wolff, raising his hammer and trying to drag a
last burst of effort from the men. “We’re almost through.”
Ratboy looked back to see hundreds upon hundreds of marauders crossing the
valley towards them. There was no sign of the flagellants, and he guessed
Raphael’s followers must have finally achieved the ultimate sacrifice in the
name of their prophet. Raphael’s corpse was gone too: dragged down to the
killing floor along with the riders who carried it.
As he looked back over the desperate faces of the charging Averlanders,
something caught Ratboy’s eye.
Far across the valley, near the command tents, a flashing light glimmered
though the early morning gloom; lifting slowly above the heads of the marauders
and heading towards them. “Master,” Ratboy croaked, but his ruined voice was
lost beneath the thundering of the horses’ hooves.
As the flickering shape moved towards them it picked up speed and after a few
minutes Ratboy realised it was a man of some kind, covered in reflective, glassy
armour and hurtling towards them with the powerful thrust of six colossal wings.
Despite his fear, and the awful pain in his broken hand, Ratboy felt anger well
up in him. This creature was responsible for everything; this was the reason for
the slaughter at Ruckendorf and Gotburg and Castle Luneberg; this was the fiend
behind the deaths of Anna’s sisters.
At the thought of Anna, Ratboy gasped. Where was she? He looked around at the
riders on either side of him. She was nowhere to be seen and Ratboy’s anger grew
all the more as he looked back at the winged figure racing towards them.
Ragged cheers broke out ahead, as they neared the crumbling walls of Mercy’s
End. He turned away from the flashing figure and saw the marauders on both sides
falling to their knees, pierced with dozens of black and white tipped arrows.
Archers had lined the walls of the keep in their hundreds, firing great banks of
arrows over the heads of the Averlanders as the towering castle gates began to
slowly open.
The pain of Ratboy’s countless wounds finally began to
overcome him. The last vestiges of Wolff’s light slipped from his throat in a
tired groan as his head lolled forward against the priest’s back. He was vaguely
aware that up ahead hooves were clattering against cobbles, rather than
blood-soaked earth, but before Wolff’s horse had reached the gate, Ratboy’s
strength left him. He loosed his grip on Wolff’s back, slid down towards the
rushing ground and knew no more.
The sound of approaching horses dragged Casper von Luneberg from the relative
warmth of his bed. He cursed as he shuffled across the bitterly cold bedchamber.
“I told them to leave me be,” he muttered, draping blankets over his royal robes
as he descended the winding stairs to the great hall. “I can’t help you now,” he
called out, assuming that some of his servants must have returned. Several days’
worth of stubble had softened his angular features and his unwashed hair
sprouted from his woolly cocoon like a collection of strange antennae. As he
entered the hall, it was only the flashes of gold on his fingers that
distinguished him from any other deranged refugee.
He paused on the threshold and tilted his head to one side, listening to the
sound of the hooves crossing his courtyard. “Two horses,” he said. “Warhorses.”
He stepped up to one of the broken windows and grimaced into the icy blast.
“Who’s there?” he called out. “Luneberg is dead. There’s no one here but us
ghosts.”
There was no reply but the duke heard the men dismount, drop to the ground
and tether their horses. There was a clatter of metal falling to the cobbles and
a furious voice rang out. “Adelman, you oaf, be careful with that.”
A vague premonition of danger tingled in the duke’s mind. There was something
in the sharp, stentorian voice that worried him. “What does it matter,” he said,
with a shrug, but his words didn’t quite ring true. Despite himself, Luneberg
felt a sudden lust for life. He stumbled back into the hall, grasping at chairs
and walls for support.
He heard the sound of the strangers’ boots as they entered the inner keep and
pounded up the stairs towards him. Hearing the approach of his executioners was
altogether different from picturing his death as something remote and abstract.
The duke began muttering under his breath. “Where did I leave my sword,” he
said, patting the surface of the long table that divided the room. “There must
be something in here.” His fingers touched upon a variety of useless objects:
cups, bowls, spoons but nothing he could use as a weapon. “It’s next to my bed,”
he said, heading for the door, but as he rushed across the hall, he stumbled on
a broken fiddle and fell heavily to the floor. He tried to lift himself, but
couldn’t seem to catch his breath.