Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

Night made the air of the Worlds Edge Mountains even more bitter. Though not as bone-jarringly cold as it was in winter, the passes were still harsh at the end of the summer, and the rock underfoot was shrouded in a cloak of frost.

Bloch, Kraus, Drassler and the senior officers sat around a rough oak table high up in the tower of the last way-fort before Black Fire Keep. Most of the army were sleeping below them, either rammed up against one another in the hard stone halls of the fort or shivering in tents clustered close to the gates. The huge fires they’d built to ward off the cold burned still, denting the worst of the chill. Bloch had ordered that they be kept stoked, even though it would give away their presence in the mountains for miles around. They hadn’t come to creep around like thieves.

At dawn they would march again. They knew where the enemy was, and thanks to Drassler’s scouts knew the rough strength of the forces that remained to them. The back of the orc army had been broken by Schwarzhelm on the plains of Averland, but enough greenskins had survived to make the Keep a difficult target. Bloch had two thousand men at his command, including the remnants of the mountain guard that had survived the first days of the incursion. Drassler reckoned a similar number of orcs had made it back to the Keep, but they had the advantage of stone to hide behind.

‘We’ll need to draw them into the open,’ Bloch said, looking over the plans of attack his men had been discussing. ‘If they stay behind those walls, we’ll never prise them out.’

‘Why’d they come out?’ asked Drassler. ‘They’ve got supplies, and they’ve got protection.’

Kraus grinned.

‘They’ll come out,’ he said. ‘Give an orc a reason to fight and it’ll take it.’

Drassler shook his head. ‘Not these ones. They had a plan, and they stuck to it.’

‘Just like the ones on the plains,’ mused Bloch, remembering the artful way Grunwald had been drawn further and further east.

‘It’s like I said,’ insisted Drassler. ‘They’ve been armed by men, and given their orders by men.’

Bloch had heard this said many times since leaving Grenzstadt. He didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was there. The orcs wore close-fitting amour and carried straight swords. They’d not attempted a wild rampage through the east of the province, but had acted as if explicitly commanded to draw Schwarzhelm from the city. And there were the coins. An orc had little use for gold, but there was plenty of it on their corpses. They’d made the schillings into earrings and pendants, or stuffed them into the throats of their victims for fun. Someone in the Empire had planned it all.

‘Tell me again,’ he said to Drassler, his chin leaning heavily on his crossed fingers. ‘How did you let them get at you?’

Drassler looked irritated. No one liked to recount the story of their failure.

‘What more do you want?’ he asked.

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