Consumed by the power and fury of the charge, Helborg felt the change in the air too late. He did not see the clouds of crows rip apart and fall to the earth, thudding heavily into the mud. As he drew his runefang and sliced it down into the neck of a fleeing warrior, he did not see the columns of marsh-gas spew from the earth itself, coalescing rapidly into the fevered outlines of witchery.
The Reiksguard drove onward, scattering their foes before them. The air stank with blackpowder and blood, flecked with flying mud and storm-rain. By the time Helborg smelled the rank putrescence simmering on the air, his knights were half a mile beyond the Imperial reserve lines and far beyond the advancing ranks of halberdiers. He pulled his steed around, and the vanguard of his cavalry drew up in his wake.
Ahead of them, half-masked by shuddering walls of miasma, the rain was spiralling away from something. Like a glittering curtain of twisting steel, the deluge bulged outwards, veering clear of a scab of shadow at its core. Dimly, Helborg could make out a vast profile beyond – a heaped, piled, bulging mountain of flesh and blubber, crowned with antlers and split near the summit by a thousand-toothed grin. Flabby arms emerged, pushing out from swelling muscle with wet pops, followed by a rust-pocked cleaver that left trails of mucus hanging behind it.
Helborg’s mount reared, its eyes rolling, and he had to yank hard on the reins to pull it back into line. The remaining Reiksguard fanned out, forming up into a loose semicircle about their master. On the edges of the formation, cowed enemy troops regrouped and started to creep back into range, emboldened by the gathering diabolical presence in their midst.
Helborg stared at the abomination, and an icy wave of hatred coursed through him. ‘Knights of the Empire!’ he roared, throwing back his cloak and holding his blade high. ‘Break this, and we break them all! To me! For Sigmar! For Karl Franz!’
Then he kicked his steed back into the charge, and his warriors surged forward with him. Ahead of them, the enormous swell of the greater daemon fully solidified, shuddering into the world of the senses with a snap of aethyr-energies releasing. The ground rippled like a wave, rocked by the arrival of such a glut of foetid, corpulent flesh-mass. Cracks zigzagged through the mud as it schlicked open, each one spilling with clumps of scrabbling roaches.
The Reiksguard charged into contact. As they tore along, the ranks of enemy foot soldiers closed on them, narrowing their room for manoeuvre. Some succeeded in waylaying knights on the flanks, and the force of the charge began to waver. The rapidly undulating landscape accounted for several more, causing the horses to crash to the earth and unseat their riders.
Helborg, though, remained undaunted, his eyes fixed resolutely on the hell-creature ahead. He careered through the screaming hordes, his companions struggling to stay on his shoulder, his blade already whirling.
‘For Sigmar!’ he bellowed.
Ahead of him, still masked by the after-birth tendrils of the aethyr-vortex, the scion of the Plaguefather gurgled a phlegm-choked laugh, and licked a long, black tongue along the killing edge of its cleaver. Its grotesque body shivered with cold laughter.
Beckoning the mortals forwards like some obscene grandfather, it raised a flabby arm to strike, and vomit-coloured aethyr-plasma flickered along the cleaver-blade.
Karl Franz paced to and fro across the platform, never taking his eyes from the unfolding struggle ahead of him. His stockade felt less like a privileged viewing tower and more like a prison, keeping him from where he needed to be. Schwarzhelm remained silently at his side, offering nothing but a grim bulwark for his growing anger to break against.
‘Order Mecke to angle the guns higher!’ Karl Franz bellowed, sending messengers scampering through the rain. ‘And get Talb’s reserves further up! They’re useless there!’
The situation was dissolving before his eyes. Pitched battles always degraded into messy, confused scrums after the first few hours – formations collapsed and orders were misheard – but the foul conditions north of Heffengen were turning the encounter into a formless crush. He could only watch as Huss’s flagellant zealots tore headlong at the enemy Skaelings, losing all shape as their fervour carried them far beyond Talb’s supporting infantry. Karl Franz was a powerless spectator as the Reiksguard’s spectacular success took them out of reach of the Reiklanders in their wake, and as the daemon-allied northerners finally brought carnage to Mecke’s west flank.
The air vibrated with febrile derangement. Clouds of flies had taken the place of the crows, blotting out the thin grey light of the sun and turning the air into a grimy dusk. Artillery strikes had blasted apart some of the more prominent tallymen, but ravening knots of daemon-kind still stalked among the living, bringing terror in their noxious wake. The Norscan bulk of the army had been reinforced by fresh waves of other tribesmen, and already the dull mantra of Crom, Crom could be heard over the choir of screams.
Huss still stood firm, as did his protégé Valten. While they still laid about them with their warhammers, hacking through whole companies of Chaos troops, the eastern flank still had a fulcrum about which to turn. For all that, the balance of the battle still hung by a fragile thread. The bulk of the mortals could not stand against daemons – even being in proximity to one was enough to threaten madness – and so the bulk of the state troopers teetered on the brink of collapse.
‘They need me,’ said Karl Franz, unable to watch the killing unfold.
Schwarzhelm, this time, said nothing. He gazed out across the battlefield, his head lifted, listening. He sniffed, drawing the air in deep. Then a shudder seemed to pass through his great frame. ‘They are here again, my liege,’ he rumbled, looking utterly disgusted.
For a moment, Karl Franz had no idea what he was talking about. He followed his Champion’s stare, screwing his eyes up against the drift of smoke and plague-spoor.
Over in the east, where Talb’s troops struggled heroically amid a slew of shifting mud, a chill wind was blowing. The ragged clouds summoned by the daemon-kin blasted back across the wide field, exposing a clear sky. All along the horizon, black figures crested a low rise. Tattered banners hung limp in the drizzle, dozens of them, standing proud above whole companies of infantry. The figures were moving – slowly, to be sure – but with a steady, inexorable progress.
Karl Franz turned to one of the engineers and snatched a telescope from his trembling hands. He clamped the bronze spyglass to one eye and adjusted the dials.
For a moment, all he saw was a blurred mass of winter-sparse foliage. Slowly, his vision clarified, resting on an outcrop beyond the curve of the Revesnecht. As he examined it, he understood why Schwarzhelm had been so appalled.
Again, he thought, bleakly. But why, and how? And for whom do they fight?
He moved the telescope’s view down the long line of unkempt figures, resting on none of them for long. He swept north, aiming for their leader. Eventually, he found him, and the spyglass halted.
Karl Franz clutched the bronze column tightly. The rumours had swirled since Alderfen, and he had not wanted to believe any of them. It had been so long ago. The chroniclers and scholars could have been wrong – it might be an impersonator, a shadow, a lesser demagogue assuming the mantle of an older and more sinister soul.