The surviving Reiksguard pressed their attack. Noxious fluids slapped and flayed out from the stricken daemon, each lashing tendril studded with clots of biting flies. Helborg pulled his steed around for another pass, his heart kindling with raw battle-joy.
It could be hurt. It could be killed.
But then, just as he was about to kick his spurs back into his mount’s flanks, he heard it. War horns rang out across the battlefield, cutting through the surge and sway of massed combat.
Helborg had heard those horns before – their desiccated timbre came from the age-bleached trumpets of another era. No Empire herald used such instruments – they were borne by armies that had no right to still be marching in this age.
Helborg twisted in the saddle, trying to scry where the sounds came from. For a moment, all he saw were the grappling profiles of knights and plague-horrors, locked in close combat around the raging mass of the greater daemon. Swirling rain lashed across them all, masking the shape of the hordes beyond.
Then, as if cut through by the harsh notes of the war horns themselves, clouds of milk-white mist split apart, exposing for a moment the whole eastern swathe of the battlefield. Helborg caught a glimpse of huge crowds of mortals and aethyr-spawn, grappling and gouging at one another across the vast sweep on the eastern flank. And then, beyond that, on the far bank of the Revesnecht, he saw the cursed banners of Sylvania hoisted against the squalls, each one marked with the pale death’s head of that cursed land. At the head of the revenant host stood a lone lord clad in blood-red armour, his long white hair standing out as starkly as bone in a wound.
A shudder of disbelief ran through him. He knew who had worn that armour. He also knew how long ago that had been. It was impossible.
Vlad von Carstein.
The shock of it broke his concentration. As he gazed, spellbound, on the host of undead advancing into the fray, he forgot his mortal peril.
The daemon lumbered towards him, dragging its vast weight forward in a rippling wall of wobbling flesh. Its lone claw scythed down, trailing streamers of smoking poisons. Helborg’s horse reared up, panicked by the looming monster bearing down on it.
Helborg fought with the reins, trying to pull his steed away from danger, but the creature had been maddened and no longer heeded him. The daemon’s talons slammed into Helborg’s helm, ripping the steel from his head and sending it tumbling. Long claws bit deep into his flesh, burning like tongues of flame.
The impact was crushing. The horse buckled under him, screaming in terror, and he was thrown clear. Helborg hit the earth with a bone-jarring crash, and blood splashed across his face. He tried to rise, to drag himself back to his feet, but a wave of sickness and dizziness surged up within him.
He gripped his sword, trying to focus on the pure steel, but the dull ache of his wounds flared up along his flank. He saw the blurred shapes of his brother-knights riding fearlessly at the daemon, and knew that none of them could hope to end it.
He cried out in agony, trying to force his limbs to obey him. A wave of numbness overwhelmed him, racing like frost-spears through his bones. He heard the deathly echo of the war horns as if from underwater. The wound in his split cheek flared, and he smelled the poison in it.
Then his head thudded against the mud, and he knew no more.
Deathclaw soared high above the battlefield. The griffon’s huge wings beat powerfully, shredding the black-edged tatters of cloud around it. Its bunched-muscle shoulders worked hard, pulling the heavily built beast into the air.
Karl Franz leaned forward in the saddle, his blade already drawn. The griffon, once released from its shackles by fearful keepers, was a furnace of bestial power. Both of them had saved the life of the other more than once, and the bond that connected them was as strong as steel.
‘You have been kept collared for too long,’ Karl Franz murmured, running the fingers of his free gauntlet roughly through Deathclaw’s feathered nape. ‘Let your anger flow.’
The war-griffon responded, emitting a metallic caw that cut through the raging airs. Its pinions swept down, propelling it like a loosed bolt over the epicentre of the battlefield.
Karl Franz gazed out at the scenes of slaughter, trying to make sense of the battle’s balance amid the confused movements of regiments and warbands. The bulk of his forces were now locked close with the Chaos warriors, gripped by brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The western flank was still largely intact and Mecke had ordered his veteran Greatswords into the fray, where they grappled with ranks of plate-armoured warriors bearing twin-headed axes and skull-chained mauls. The centre remained contested. The bulk of the Reiklanders had no answer to the seething tides of daemonic horrors, though the Reiksguard knights still fought hard amid the raging centre of the field. Over to the east, the Ostermarkers were fighting a desperate rearguard action against utter destruction. Beyond them, the army of the undead was drawing closer to the battlefield, advancing in terrifyingly silent ranks.
Karl Franz’s task was clear. Mecke still held position. Schwarzhelm, Huss and Valten would have to salvage something from the wreckage of the eastern flank, whether or not von Carstein came as an ally or an enemy. The malign presence at the core of the Chaos army, though, was beyond any of them, and its baleful aura was spreading like a shroud across the whole army. From his vantage, Karl Franz could see its bloated bulk squatting amid the shattered Reiksguard vanguard, laying about with a gore-streaked fist. Such a monster was capable of ripping through whole contingents of mortal troops, and nothing else on the field was capable of standing against it.
There was no sign of Helborg. No doubt the Reiksmarshal had charged the creature, hoping to bring it down before its full strength was manifest. It was a typically reckless move, but the daemon still lived, despite the gouges in its nacreous flesh and an arm-stump spurting with ink-black blood.
‘That is the prey, great one,’ urged Karl Franz, pointing the tip of his runefang towards the daemon’s blubbery shoulders.
The griffon plunged instantly, locking its huge wings back and hurtling towards the horror below. Karl Franz gripped the reins tightly, feeling the ice-wet air scream past him. The landscape melted into a blur of movement, all save the bloated monstrosity below them, which reared into range like a vast weeping boil on the face of the earth.
Deathclaw screamed out its battle-rage, bringing huge foreclaws up. At the last moment, the daemon’s vast head lolled upward, catching sight of the two of them just as their fearsome momentum propelled them into it.
The griffon dragged its talons across the daemon’s face, slicing into its eyes. Its rear legs raked across the daemon’s slobbering chest, churning the foetid flesh into putrid ribbons. Karl Franz hacked out with his runefang, feeling heat radiate out from the ancient blade – the runes knew the stench of daemon-kind, and they blazed like stars.
Just as the daemon reached for them with its lone arm, Deathclaw pounced clear again, circling as expertly as a hawk. The daemon’s talons slashed at it, but the griffon ducked past the attack and surged in close again. Deathclaw’s beak tore at the daemon’s shoulder, ripping more skin from its savaged hide.
The daemon twisted, pulling its obese haunches clear of the slough below and reaching to pluck the griffon from the sky. Its claw shot out, and clutching fingers nearly closed on Deathclaw’s tail.
The griffon shot clear with a sudden burst of speed, and circled in for a renewed strike. As it did so, Karl Franz seized the hilt of his sword two-handed and held it point-down. He knew just what his steed was about to do, and shifted his weight in the saddle in preparation.