Swords of the Emperor by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, General, Fiction, Fantasy, Warhammer, Epic
ISBN: 9781849702409
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2012-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

Rufus Leitdorf looked down on the stricken face of Kurt Helborg. The Marshal slept still, propped up on bolsters of duckfeather. The two men were alone in the bedchamber of one of his father’s houses, far out in the eastern reaches of Averland. The room was typically grand, with a high plastered ceiling and heavy wooden furniture against all four walls. The bed itself was larger than some peasants’ hovels, with fanciful images of dragons and crested eagles carved into the headboard.

The night was old. Candlelight made Helborg’s face look even paler. The craggy features, so admired and feared across the Empire, were now haggard, and the proud moustache hung in lank strands across his cheeks. His breathing was shallow, and a thick layer of sweat lay on his skin.

Leitdorf took up another towel and began to dab the moisture away. Only a few months ago he’d never have stooped to minister to another man’s discomfort, even a man as famed as Helborg, but things had changed. He was now a fugitive in his own land, hunted by men he had once aspired to command. There seemed little point in retaining old pretensions of grandeur.

He replaced the towel on the low table by the bed. Leitdorf sat for a while, watching the man’s breast rise and fall under the coverlet. Helborg fought with death. The wound in his shoulder had closed, but some profound struggle was still going on within him.

There was a knock at the door. Leitdorf rose from the bed, smoothing the sheets from where he’d been sitting.

“Come.”

Leofric von Skarr, preceptor of the Reiksguard, entered. He was still in full battle armour and looked as grim and wolfish as ever. His dark hair hung around his face, criss-crossed with the scars that so suited his name.

“Any change?”

“None.”

“He hasn’t woken?”

“Not while I’ve been with him.”

Skarr nodded. Around his neck hung the shard taken from Helborg’s sword. It had become something of a totem for the depleted Reiksguard company who still guarded their master, the emblem of his future recovery.

“There was another patrol out there, beyond the line of the hills,” said Skarr. “We killed them all, but they were getting close. They’re going to find us.”

“Then we move again.”

“You haven’t run out of houses?”

Leitdorf gave a superior smile. “My father owned more houses in Averland than there are whores in Wurtbad.”

Skarr snorted.

“It’s no solution, this endless fleeing,” he said dismissively, leaning against a fabulously expensive Breugsletter sideboard as if it were a country gate. “They’ll catch up with us eventually, and we don’t have the men to fight them all.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Leitdorf walked over to a writing desk by the window. Across it lay a vellum map of Averland, lit by more candles. It bore the crest of Marius Leitdorf in the corner and was obviously a private commission. Each of the old count’s many manor houses and fortified places was marked. “Look at this.”

Skarr joined him.

“We’re here,” said Leitdorf, pointing to a country mansion several days’ ride from Averheim.

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