Wolf of Sigmar (Time of Legends) by C. L. Werner

Author:C. L. Werner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781849705790
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2014-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter XII

Averland, 1123

The mood within the hunting lodge Mandred and his commanders had taken over for their headquarters was tense. After the long campaign through Ostland, the liberation of Wolfenburg, the fighting against both skaven and Vanhal’s undead in Stirland, many of his nobles had grown weary of the war. They urged Mandred to secure what had been gained, to disperse the army and send the men back to their homes.

It was an argument Mandred had heard many times, and it was an argument that never failed to fill him with contempt for those who made it. Only a week before, these same men had walked the streets of Woerden, seen with their own eyes the misery the town had been reduced to by their skaven conquerors. The ratmen weren’t simply a rival baron, a mortal human enemy to be fought between spring and the harvest. They were an insidious pestilence, a plague every bit as heinous as the Black Plague itself. Where they conquered, they despoiled, stripped the land bare, enslaving the populace and taking many of them down into their burrows – never to be seen again. There was no question of coexistence with this vermin, no possibility of simply conceding territory to them and hoping they would be content. No, the skaven had to be hounded out, pressed relentlessly, exterminated until not a single one remained. Nothing less could ensure the security of the Empire or even just a small corner of the Empire. It had to be all or nothing, because this inhuman foe would never relent. Given the chance to recover, allowed any respite at all, they would be back. Kurgaz said the dwarf Book of Grudges was riddled with wars against these monsters, wars that stretched back thousands of years.

The peasants understood. Their ties to the land were more intimate than those of their noble lords. It struck Mandred as bitterly ironic that the men who owned the land had less understanding of it than those who served them. Not simply how to till the soil or bring the cattle to pasture, but an actual appreciation of the land as a living, vibrant thing. For too many of the nobles, their holdings were merely something to generate an income; their interest in it began and ended with the coin each harvest generated.

Then there were the opportunists, those like Baroness Carin who saw in the conflict a way to gather power for themselves. Mandred had been impressed by the noblewoman’s strength and determination, but her calculating politicking was something that evoked his contempt. Wherever his army marched, Baroness Carin ensured that concessions were made to Nordland and Middenland, pacts and treaties that would favour those realms once the fighting was done. She sought to profit from the war, that was clear enough, and her inclusion of Middenland in those spoils was also obvious. She’d made it clear several times that her interest in the Graf of Middenheim was more than platonic.

There were many who were

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