01 - Heldenhammer by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

Author:Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Warhammer, Time of Legends
Published: 2011-09-12T22:33:30+00:00

The top of Warrior’s Hill was exposed, and the wind whipped around it with cruel fingers that lifted cloaks and tunics to allow autumn’s chill entry to the body. Sigmar made no attempt to pull his wolfskin cloak tighter as though daring the season to try its best to discomfit him. The cold was his constant companion now, and he welcomed it into his heart like an old friend.

No sooner had Sigmar opened his eyes and awoken to pain than the memory of the bloodshed by the river had returned, and he had screamed with an agony born not from his near death, but from his loss.

He remembered telling the wounded boy of the Field of Swords that pain was the warrior’s constant companion, but he now realised that it was not pain, but despair that dogged a warrior’s every moment: despair at the futility of war, at the hopelessness of joy and the foolishness of dreams.

Six armoured warriors accompanied him, his protectors since Gerreon’s attack nearly five weeks ago. Fear of assassination had made old women of his sword-brothers, but Sigmar did not blame them, for who could have foreseen that Gerreon would turn on him with such savagery?

He closed his eyes and dropped to his knees, tears spilling down his face as he thought of Ravenna. His grief at seeing the paleness of her flesh, stark against the darkness of her hair was as fresh now as it had been the moment he had seen her lying lifeless upon the pallet bed.

Gone was the vivacious, intelligent girl who had shone sunlight into his heart, and in her place was a gaping, empty wound that would never heal. His hands balled into fists, and he fought to control the anger building within him, for with no one to strike at, Sigmar’s rage had turned inwards.

He should have seen the darkness in Gerreon’s heart. He should have trusted his friend’s suspicions that Gerreon’s contrition was false. There must have been some sign he had missed that would have alerted him to the treachery that was to rob him of his love.

With every passing day, Sigmar drew further into himself, shutting out Wolfgart and Pendrag as they tried to rouse him from his melancholy. Strong wine became his refuge, a means of blotting out the pain and visions that plagued him nightly of Gerreon’s sword plunging into Ravenna’s body.

Nor was Ravenna’s death the only pain he carried in his heart, for he knew that his father, too, was dead. No word had come from the north, but Sigmar knew with utter certainty that the king of the Unberogen had fallen. The people of Reikdorf eagerly awaited the return of their king, but Sigmar knew that they were soon to experience the same sense of loss that daily tore at him.

A secret part of him relished the thought of others suffering as he did, but the nobility of his soul knew that such thoughts were unworthy of him, and he fought against such base pettiness.

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