01 - Empire in Chaos (40 page)

They stood over ten feet in height, and their hulking bodies were covered in
fur and scarred with battle-wounds and ritualised markings burnt into their
flesh. Their heads were heavy and bestial, and were supported by massive necks
of rippling muscle. Steam snorted from their nostrils, and giant horns extended
from either side of their heads, just above bovine ears. Their eyes blazed with
blood-frenzy and hatred, and they carried immense weapons in their human-like,
oversized hands. True creatures of Chaos, they had emerged from the forests in
the north to join the slaughter.

Karl rose to his feet as one of the monsters leapt into the air. The beast
brought its massive axe smashing down onto one of the knights, splitting him
from the shoulder to the waist. The dead warrior slid from the saddle as his
steed reared, ripping the axe from the creature’s hands and it lashed out with a
balled fist. The blow caught the horse on the side of the head, and it collapsed
to the ground, a tangled mess of limbs.

A knight urged his baulking steed forwards and drove the point of his sword
deep into the beast’s chest, and it bellowed in pain and outrage. It grabbed the
knight around the throat and lifted him from the saddle before slamming him
forcibly into the ground.

“Myrmidia!” shouted Karl, hefting his sword over his shoulder. He stumbled
forwards and brought it down into the beast’s neck, severing the arteries there.
Blood fountained from the wound, but the creature did not die. It shook its
heavy head from side to side, foam flying from thick lips, its red eyes focused
on Karl.

With a snort it surged forwards and hooked one of its horns between his legs.
In one violent motion it flicked its head up and hurled him into the air, his
arms and legs flailing, He smashed into one of his fellow knights, and they both
toppled to the ground.

He came up groggily, and as a massive cleaver flashed downwards he threw
himself backwards. The blade smashed down into his fallen comrade, who was cut
in half by the blow, Karl staggered to his feet.

A riderless horse reared next to him and blindly he reached out and grabbed
at the reins. He caught hold of them, and swung himself up into the saddle. It
was mayhem all around him as his knights battled the bestial creatures vainly,
being butchered by the brutal monsters.

“Blazing Sun!” he cried, his voice cutting across the din of bellowing beasts
and screaming horses. “With me!” he shouted, and kicked the horse hard. It broke
into a run, and Karl raced free of the one-sided battle. “With me!” he roared
again.

Less than a third of the Knights of the Blazing Sun rode clear, and they rode
hard back across the field. The battle-crazed minotaurs raced after then,
bellowing in anger and baying for blood.

The knights veered off to the south suddenly, leaving the way clear for the
handgunners. The first rank of guns barked and the soldiers dropped to their
knees. The second rank of handgunners fired, and they too dropped down to their
knees, frantically reloading their long weapons as the third rank opened fire.

As the smoke cleared, there were few of the minotaurs still standing, and
those that were staggered unsteadily, their bodies pierced dozens of times,
blood seeping from their wounds and matting their thick fur.

The knights, having wheeled around upon the open field, thundered back
towards the massive beasts, and the last of them were hacked down beneath their
swords.

Dietrich bit his lip, tense and alert. He knew that four miles to the south
battle was underway—he could hear the pounding of cannons—and he prayed for
the men there. But he had seen the scale of the army arrayed against the Empire,
and he could see little chance of victory.

Such a fickle thing, chance. He thought that somewhere in the heavens above
Ranald, the god of chance and trickery, was chuckling to himself, and Dietrich
swore that he would dedicate a year’s pay to the trickster’s acolytes if the god
smiled upon him today.

Luck was all that would save them, he thought. If the enemy cavalry took a
wider arc around the battlefield and attacked from the rear, then any chance of
victory would be dashed. If the oil of the engineers had soaked too deep, or the
snow deadened its effect, then hope was lost. If the enemy noticed something
strange about the snow ahead of them, if they noticed that the snow here was
more melted than it was elsewhere—an unexpected side-effect of the oil—then
the ambush would fail even before it had been launched. Ranald, he prayed, give
us just this chance.

One of his men shouted, and he looked up.

“Dietrich! They come!”

The scout scrambled to the edge of the high ground, crawling forward to look
down into the narrow defile below. It was perhaps three hundred yards wide, and
the snow hid the cobbled road beneath.

In the distance to the north a shimmer of movement could be seen, and
Dietrich’s heart leapt. The enemy were on the road, riding hard in their
direction.

“Thank you,” Dietrich muttered, casting his eyes to the sky.

He squirmed back away from the lip—scrambling and running down the slope on
the other side.

“Get them fires blazing, boys!” he shouted, and dozens of braziers were
stoked. Dietrich watched the sky carefully for any hint of smoke. He had
instructed his men to use only the driest tinder, for any hint of smoke in the
sky might warn the enemy, and they could easily avoid the trap if they suspected
anything. Little smoke drifted up from the braziers, and he let out a slow
breath that he had not realised he had been holding.

“They are getting close, sir!” came the shout from the lip, and Dietrich
ordered the braziers to be carried up the slope. Each was borne by a pair of
men, the metal urns carried on a pair of wooden poles.

One of the men slipped on his ascent and a brazier toppled sideways with a
crash, the burning embers falling into the deep snow. A cloud of steam rose
where they fell, and a sharp hissing filled the air. Smoke began to rise as the
coals touched the wet grass beneath the snow.

Dietrich swore and leapt through the drift, whipping the cloak from his
shoulders. He leapt at the steaming circle, throwing his worn cloak over it to
dampen it. Leaping to his feet, he stamped on the area until the coals had been
put out, soaked by the melting snows and driven into the moist earth. Standing
back, Dietrich looked at his blackened, muddy cloak and turned to the scout who
had stumbled with a sour expression.

“We get out of this, and I’ll be having your cloak,” he said.

The other braziers were in position, just behind the lip of the hillock and
Dietrich took his position. The forty men lay unmoving, just behind the rise,
and he prayed that no enemy scouts had seen them. If the enemy just turned off
the road and travelled for a hundred yards along the higher, rougher ground,
then this risk would come to nothing.

But on they came, riding hard. In the lead were around two hundred and fifty
horsemen riding stout steppes ponies, hulking hounds of terrifying size loping
alongside them. The riders were cloaked in furs and carried spears. Their steeds
were swift—not as fast over a short distance as the big destriers that the
Knights of the Blazing Sun rode, but they could run for hours on end without
tiring. Over a day, the distance these horsemen could travel would far outstrip
the noble templars.

Behind them came the heavy knights of Chaos. They rode midnight steeds that
stood easily twenty-five hands tall at the shoulder, massive beasts whose eyes
blazed with unholy light. The knights were ensconced in black armour, and they
carried deadly weapons of war. They each wore a flowing cloak of feathers, and
an eye of brilliant blue shone in the centre of their black helmets.

Alongside these dread warriors of Chaos rolled deathly chariots, barbed
scythes rotating on their steel-rimmed wheels. A pair of giant black steeds
pulled each of these heavy war machines, and fully armoured warriors stood on
their armoured platforms, nail-studded whips cracking.

There were no more than fifty of the monstrous knights of the enemy, but the
aura of terror they exuded was palpable.

“Stay on the road, stay on the road,” Dietrich willed them, every muscle
tense. Closer and closer they came, and he waited for the moment when they would
spot something amiss, something that would alert them to the ambush. But still
they came, registering no alarm or knowledge of the threat they were riding
towards.

With a nod, Dietrich held his first arrow to one of the braziers, and the
oil-soaked rag tied around its tip lit instantly. Along the line of the hillock,
fifty archers did likewise.

“Now!” he shouted, and rose to one knee. He pulled his bowstring taut and
loosed in one smooth motion. The weight of the oil-soaked rag threw the balance
off the arrow, but he had compensated for this, and it flew true.

He heard yells from the enemy as they spotted the archers up on the ridge,
but they had come too far to avoid what was to come next.

Fifty arrows sliced through the air around the horsemen, and around a dozen
of them were struck. Other arrows sank into the flesh of their horses and the
brutal hounds, and they bucked and kicked in pain and fear, and filled the air
with their deep growls and yelps. But it was the arrows that struck the ground
itself that did the real damage.

Flames raced as the oil that had been doused across the area in the hours
before dawn caught. The flames burnt hot and fierce, and scores of men were
thrown down as their horses bolted, their tails and the long hair around their
hooves catching fire.

The long shaggy fur of the hounds caught fire, and they barked and roared,
and snapped at anything nearby. Horses’ legs were crushed in their massive jaws,
and fallen men had their throats ripped out by the frenzied beasts. Other war
hounds ripped at each other, rolling over through the blaze, further spreading
the fire.

Sudden explosions erupted amongst the panicking horses, for along with the
oil, the engineers of the elector’s army had hidden a series of small wooden
caskets packed with black power just beneath the snow. As the oil caught and
flames whipped up the road to the north, it ignited these oil-soaked caskets and
they exploded outwards. Horses were thrown to the ground, and men screamed as
their flesh was seared by the detonations. One horse’s leg was blown off, and
chunks of flesh rained down upon the others.

Scores of them were killed in those first moments, but the destruction was
not yet complete. As expected, the horsemen who had not been engulfed in fire
pulled back away from the inferno, and it was then that the other group of
scouts, positioned further to the north, launched their attack. More flaming
arrows arced down onto the rear of the enemy column, and a second wall of fire
reared up, blocking their retreat.

The horsemen and hounds milled in between the two barriers of fire, and they
were brutally cut down by wave after wave of arrows. Dietrich went through a
full quiver of arrows and moved onto his second, for the enemy had nowhere to
run—the ground was too steep and rough on either side of the road for them to
climb, and their passage forward and back was blocked by the fire which no horse
would approach.

Dozens of men leapt from the backs of their horses and ran towards the
scouts, attempting to scramble up the steep ground, but they were sitting
targets to the archers, and they were mercilessly cut down, one by one.

The hounds, however, had no such trouble ascending the broken ground, and
they leapt up the precipice with frightening speed. They bore dozens of scouts
to the ground beneath their weight, jaws snapping, breaking limbs and ripping
flesh. One man was shaken like a rabbit in the jaws of a hulking beast, and his
back broke with an audible crack.

One of the monstrous war hounds leapt at Dietrich, jaws latching onto his
forearm and throwing him to the ground. Its growling filled his ears, and its
hot breath was on his face, and he cried out. He reversed his grip on the arrow
in his free hand and stabbed its point into the beast’s head, but felt the tip
break against the stone-like cranium of the monster. With one final, desperate
stab, he pushed the wooden arrow shaft through the creature’s eye, and it
released him with a snarl.

Dietrich regained his feet, his arm a bloody ruin, and drew his hunting
knife. He leapt on the wounded war hound, and plunged his blade into its neck,
time and time again, until at last it was still.

The heavily armoured Chaos knights urged their infernal steeds on, and
continued to canter up the road, ignoring the mayhem around them. Chariots
rumbled along beside them, dozens of arrows stuck in their armoured sides.

Wincing at the pain in his arm, Dietrich aimed carefully and fired, watching
as his arrow cut through the smoke and fire and struck one of the knights high
in the neck. The warrior barely flinched, and the arrow fell harmlessly to the
ground. The scout swore.

And then the knights rode their horses straight through the flames as if they
mattered not at all.

Swearing again, he reached for his last oil-soaked arrow, and lit it from the
brazier. Drawing his string back hard, he fired the arrow straight up into the
air.

Seeing the arrow that symbolised that the ploy had failed, the Knights of the
Blazing Sun kicked their steeds forwards, and a hundred templars began galloping
over the rough moorland, three hundred yards further south, hidden from view
from the road.

They rode towards the rise, and saw the enemy knights and chariots cantering
perpendicular to their position. They thundered down the clear slope before
them, lowering their lances. Their horn blared, and their steeds were urged
faster, and they smashed into the side of the enemy formation. Massive black
armoured enemy knights were ripped from their saddles, and horses screamed as
they were knocked to the ground by the force of the impact.