"I hope you're counting your lucky stars," Emil hissed as they made their way through the sewers.
"Oh believe me, I am," Valten replied, flashing a grin back at the Witch Hunter.
He'd thought he might be thrown into the dungeons and left to rot, but thankfully it hadn't come to that. Aldebrand had taken the two of them up to the wall to examine the devastation left in the wake of their attack. All three mammoths had been brought down by their own handlers, unable to stop the rampage any other way, and each one had left a trail of burning destruction in their wake.
Aldebrand turned to the two of them. "So, your disobedience was not without benefit."
Valten glanced at Ottilia, were they being punished or not? "My lord-" he began.
"The enemy will be weaker without their mammoths, and I don't doubt they suffered other losses in the rampage," Aldebrand traced his fingers on the edge of the inner city battlements, looking out at his smouldering city. "Better than could have been hoped for, which is why I forbid such a move." He glanced over his shoulder at them. "It would seem I was wrong, you've done more than anything so far to hurt them with this one night, and just the three of you."
"Father-"
He held up a hand to stop her. Then he turned to them. "What more could you do if the army went with you?"
So that had led to the plan for the day. Aldebrand split off a full third of his army and ordered it to rest for the day, keep up their strength, for they would be following Valten again that night to launch a full attack on the enemy from every possible direction. It had been hell for those soldiers to watch Aldebrand lead a spirited defence of the walls, unable to help, their hearts in their chests, despairing over the possibility that the wall defence would fail, but it didn't fail, the men fought and died and held. Now it was their turn.
"Kill a few for me will you," Ottilia had told him as the army descended into the sewers.
Aldebrand had refused to allow her to join the attack, for she had disobeyed his orders, Valten may be a herald, but Ottilia was one of his soldiers and his daughter, she would remain behind on the night watch while Valten dealt the killing blow. "As many as my hammer can reach," he said, clapping her arm, "and more besides."
She smiled grimly. "I don't doubt it."
"Ottilia, to your post," Aldebrand swept over, his hair plastered to a sweat covered brow, his armour caked in blood and his cloak heavy with dust.
Not pushing her luck with her father any further, Ottilia saluted. "Yes, Count Aldebrand." She turned and made her way to the wall to take up her post.
Aldebrand shook his head and turned to him. "Then I suppose it's good luck to you, Herald."
"I won't let you down, Count Aldebrand, you have my word."
Aldebrand looked into his eyes for just a little longer. "I believe it," he said, before turning and making his way to the keep for some much needed rest.
And so Valten, Emil and a detachment of the Hochland army wound their way through the sewers, heading deep into the lower city, ready to strike the enemy with full force. Last night they had attacked with subtlety and dealt a slight blow, tonight they would be faint but strike with full fury.
"Here will do," he said as they came across an exit from the sewer into the lower city through a hole just over head height in the wall. "Emil, go have a peek."
Emil nodded, "give me a boost." Valten signalled for two soldiers to move, and they sheathed their swords and hurried over to the wall, cupping their hands. The witch hunter leapt onto them, boosting up and latching his fingers on the rim of the gap, ignoring the remnants of the filth that coated the opening. He poked his head through and looked around. "Stinks, but it's clear, let's go." He scrambled out and reached a hand down so grab the hand of the first soldier to follow. One at a time, the soldiers made their way up. Valten was the last to get boosted, and thanks to the gromril armour he bore, three had to reach in and seize his arms to haul him up.
"Much appreciated," he said, smiling at the men before reaching back to help haul up the two soldiers who had been boosting the others. They had opened on the edge of the main street, the men who had been pulled up had slipped into the shadows of the buildings lining the cobbled road and Valten hurried to join them. Twenty seven men in this squad, they would be outnumbered in their initial engagement, but the shock of their attack, the disorientation of all the other attacks occurring at the same time and Valten's own prowess should be enough to tip it in their favour. Strike hard, strike fast, deal a telling blow, then retreat.
"Which way?" Asked Emil to the leader of the swordsmen with them.
"This way," the grizzled soldier Karl said, pointing left down the street. "Just down there, second street on the right and we should be on the edge of that camp." He indicated the faint glow shimmering into the darkness behind the buildings ahead of them.
"Good, let's go, we can't have long before the signal comes. Emil, take point, Karl you follow, I'll come in the middle, you two, take the rear." He noticed one of the swordsmen was shaking in his boots, his shoulders rising and falling with uneven breaths. "What's your name?" He asked. The man looked up at him and Valten realised that boy was a more appropriate descriptor.
"Aloys," he whispered.
"You're going to be okay Aloys," he said, smiling, "just stick by me, okay." Not giving Aloys a chance to wait and doubt, he pulled him along and set off in the middle of the group.
Emil and Karl led the swordsmen through the shadows until they were within sight of the palisade of the norscan camp. The men slipped into the ransacked houses nearby, torn apart in the northerner's hunt for loot, and waited, the sound of breathing the only thing that could be heard in the darkness. Valten waited by the door, poking his head out and watching the camp. It seemed to be silent; he couldn't even see any sentries keeping watch, strange, after last night he'd assumed that they would be keeping an even tighter watch.
"We should go now," Aloys said from beside him.
"Not just yet," he replied. "If we attack before the signal is given then the other camps might be alerted. But don't worry, we should hear it any minute now." Aloys nodded vigorously, the adrenaline pumping through him.
They waited and waited, he saw one of the men in the next building step out and piss away his anxiety.
"Can't be long now," Aloys said.
"It won't be," he replied, holding out a hand to keep Aloys back from the door, "don't worry." But even Valten felt the eagerness within his very bones ready to burst forth, he wanted to fight.
The bell tolled. The chimes that normally rang for weddings and ceremonies and great events now rang for blood and battle. "This is it boys!" Valten grinned back at them. "Let's go get the bastards!"
Valten wrenched open the door and hurtled right for the camp before the enemy learned for whom the bell doth toll.
They had left only a wounded warrior on guard, his arm hanging limp and bloody by his side with his remaining hand clutched thick spear with a heavy barbed head. Valten ended him. He burst into the camp, followed by his soldiers. A few other barbarians were waiting for them, all swiftly dispatched, with only a flesh wound suffered in return. "They must still be sleeping," the captain said. He sounded in awe of their luck. "Fools, torch the tents, burn them while they sleep."
The furs caught light easily, the fires spreading swiftly, tongues of fire darting from one burning tent to lick the heat and light across the next. The men spread the fires for as long as they could keep up, but it didn't take long for the fires to outpace them and to start spreading alone.
The men cheered in their victory, the cheers rising above the fires as a battalion of swordsmen came from the other side of the tent, their own fires curling into the sky around them.
Something was wrong. He glanced around and found Emil looking just as concerned. "Something's off," he said to the witch hunter, "what is it."
"Listen," Emil shushed him. "What do you not here?"
Valten listened, not sure what Emil was asking. "What would you be doing if your tent caught fire around you?"
"Screaming probably," Valten said. Then he saw the knowing look on Emil's weathered features. "No no no!"
He raced for the nearest tent, the fires swirling around the furs and fabrics. He tore the curtain covering the opening aside. Heat stung his eyes and smoke swept up his nostrils. He covered his lower face with an armoured glove, desperate to keep out the heat and smoke, and squinted through the light to where half a dozen sleeping furs lay on the ground, discarded, and very much empty.
He rushed back outside. "Stop!" He yelled. "Stop!" He called again when his voice failed to carry over the sound of the crackling fires. A few of the nearer soldiers must have seen him for they stopped celebrating to look his way. When Aloys noticed he added his own voice to Valten's call. "The tents are empty!" he yelled. "The enemy aren't here!"
"Then where are they?" Karl asked, the men looking at the tents in confusion.
"Blood of Sigmar!" Emil had scaled the palisade like a squirell and leapt to the roof of a nearby building. He turned back to them. "They're attacking the wall!"
Valten led his men in a furious race back towards the wall, all though of subtlety and strategy gone. They made it onto the main street and turned for the gate only to find their way barred. Fearsome barbarian warriors were finishing off another force that had attempted to make their way back to the gate. They turned to Valten's group with hungry gazes and bloody axes, and charged. "For Sigmar!" Valten roared, and led his men to meet them.
Desperation against barbarity, order against disorder, the two forces clashed. Valten broke bone and shattered skulls, Emil shot one foe through the head and stabbed another in the heart. Karl opened a warrior's throat from ear to ear, but for every foe killed, a soldier of Sigmar was lost. Aloys was the first to fall, driven to the ground, kicking and screaming, the axes followed, rising and falling, rising and falling. One swordsman drove his blade through a barbarian's guts, but the warrior seized the swordsman's head and twisted violently. Three warriors were bowled over by a brute a head taller than any of them and they were set upon by his fellows.
In the end, Valten was able to thin the enemy enough for them to break through and make for the gate, leaving half their number behind them. Their intervention was timely, for the second wall was on the verge of collapse.
Warriors were scaling the wall with grapples and crude ladders, met at the top by state troops tried desperately to drive them back. Valten saw one swordsman drive two barbarians from the wall their bodies twisting and flailing as they fell and broke upon the ground. The swordsman leapt onto the battlements and parted the rope of a grapple with a single swipe of his blade. Before he could celebrate a spear hurled from the base of the wall took him in the chest.
At the gate more crowds of warriors were waiting as a trio of ice trolls hammered at the carved wood with great clubs, splinters flying off it an huge dents marking the carven oak. It wouldn't last much longer. Just before Valten and his soldiers reached them the gate sundered, flying open. As they did so a hail of arrow and shot spat out, peppering the trolls, killing two outright and sending the other spinning away, clutching at its face and roaring in pain. Following the bullets came a rush of hot air, followed by a huge skull of roaring flame, teeth gnashing, tongue licking that fell upon the barbarian warriors like a wolf upon a feast. Valten raised his arms to shield his eyes as the skull burned out. A shield wall of spearmen had followed the skull and now took up position in the ruined gates, arrows flying over them to land among the barbarian warriors.
"Charge!" Valten roared and smashed into the barbarians, still disorganised from the strike, punching through them like a hot dagger through butter. Valten's survivors joined the spearmen and drove the enemy back, creating a bubble of hope around the gate. As Valten lay about him, he hoped that other survivors would follow.
Few would come. Just as Valten and his people had set fires in their enemy camp, other battalions had struck at further enemy camps to the same effect. One by one they had made for the inner wall, realising what had happened, and most fell into carefully hidden ambushes, cut down in great numbers, others were hounded by wolves or ambushed as they were setting the original fires. Of all the warriors who set out to attack that night, barely one in six made it back to the gate, most arriving in ones and twos, crippled and exhausted. And all the while, the enemy pressed their attack on the inner wall, swarming all along its length as the Hochland armies desperately tried to throw them back. At times, the warriors of the north came close to taking a section of wall, only to be beaten back, at others, the Hochland army was able to move gunners and crossbowmen right up to the battlements to rain death on the warriors below. But as the attack progressed, the defenders became more desperate, losing more and more soldiers for every meagre victory gained.
It was no different at the gate. At times, Valten was leading a spirited defence that the enemy bounced off, at times he was a lone island of defiance as worn out defenders retreated and fresh men came to plug the gaps.
"Herald!" A soldier seized him in a momentary break and brought him back as more swarmed around him to form a fresh shield wall.
"What is it?" He panted.
"The Count needs to see you."
Valten was brought back through the gate to where Aldebrand Ludenhof was waiting, his long rifle smoking from use and blood spotting his armour. All around them, wounded were being gathered up and taken back through the inner city towards the citadel.
"Herald," Aldebrand growled darkly. At his side a wizard in flame red robes dabbed at his brow, sweat pouring down his face. "We've lost here, the inner city can't be held."
"We can Count, we-"
"No, we can't," Aldebrand said. "We're moving back to the citadel, as many men as we can bring, but we need some to hold the line here."
"I'll stay with them," Valten said at once.
"We need you Herald," Aldebrand insisted.
"I'm not dying here," he said. "But my attack allowed this to happen, I'll hold the line, let you retreat."
Aldebrand stared for a second, then nodded. "Very well, Sigfried here will give you a signal when we've reached the citadel, when you see it, retreat, we'll provide covering fire."
"How will I see it?" Valten asked, looking at the red wizard.
"You won't miss it," Siegfried said, smiling, "I promise you that."
Valten snatched a water skin and took a long swig before tossing it back to the startled soldier he'd taken it from. "I'd better get going."
Aldebrand nodded. "Go, I'll oversee the retreat." Valten heard the bitterness in Aldebrand's voice, the shame at having to leave his men behind to lead a retreat, a retreat to the last heart of his domains. Valten raised Ghal Maraz in salute and returned to the gate. Most of the soldiers on or around the walls made one last push to clear enemies away before most turned to retreat, a last guard remaining to buy time for their friends, a second that might cost them their lives and save another's, a price they paid without hesitation. Valten noted that many of the last guard that followed him through the gate sported great wounds, many wouldn't see the next dawn even if they had retreated, there was no choice for them, but others bore no wounds beyond exhaustion, their eyes set and grips firm. He nodded his silent thanks to them before leading them out of the broken gate once more.
Valten looked upon the fallen and slain, those who had died here because he had the arrogance to believe that the same trick would work twice, and thought of all those who hadn't made it back, of Aloys who had died in the streets and Karl who had fallen beside him trying to hold the enemy at bay. Ottilia was meant to be on the walls somewhere, had she made it? Where was Emil, likely dead as well. He stepped forward to meet the enemy while his fellows formed up behind him. Taking Ghal Maraz in two hands he swung it in wide arcs, felling two or three foes with every devastating arc, driving the enemy away.
But in the end, they were fighting on borrowed time. The wounded among them were the first to fall, blows slipping past weakened defences to shatter shield and skull, next were the fellows beside them, suddenly exposed to axe and blade and spear and unable to keep up their defence. Soon, sooner than he would have liked, Valten stood alone among the defiant dead, attacks coming from all angles. For every enemy he felled, three attacks rang off his gromril armour. But every moment they tried to kill him was another they weren't swarming towards the gate.
Then it came, a dryness in the air. Then came a heat and then a roar. Then a great lance of flame shot from the sky, spearing through the enemy on the wall. Then came another, and another, and soon, the street in front of the wall became a target for flaming spears shattering stone and turning flesh to cinders.
There's my signal, he thought, turning and hurtling back through the gate as fast as his worn down limbs could carry him. He'd made it perhaps fifty yards from the gate, enemies starting to trickle in behind him, away from the falling lances.
He turned, still backing away, better to not have his back to the enemy. But then came Aldebrand's covering fire. A great roar of cannon shot slammed into the gatehouse, targeting the structural weaknesses and bringing it down in a tumble of stone and masonry. It wouldn't slow the enemy forever, but it was enough. He gripped Ghal Maraz. It was enough to butcher the few who had made it through before he returned to the citadel.
Luregar looked around with glee as the bodies of the sigmarite fallen were piled high, the warriors of the north revelling in their victory. It was truly a great slaughter.
"Wulfrik! Wulfrik! Wulfrik!" Was the chant of victory, as the champion of chaos wandered among them, sword bloody and raised.
But it wasn't a victory, not really, not in the way that truly mattered.
Luregar didn't dare interrupt Wulfrik in his celebrations, but when they had died down for a moment, as hordes of warriors began moving up to the final wall standing against them, then he approached the hunter of champions.
"Oh great wanderer," he said, bowing low. "Forgive this one's impertinence, but there is one last problem we have."
Wulfrik huffed. "You talk about this so called Herald of Sigmar, Raven-Caller?" Wulfrik demanded.
Luregar nodded. "Indeed my lord, he fought, and fought, but still he lives, no matter who tried their hand against him."
Wulfrik laughed. "Of course they did, do you not see it, Raven-Caller, the gods have sent me to claim the skull of the Herald. Me! Not them. Do not fear, next time the Herald of Sigmar goes to battle, it will be me he faces," Wulfrik slammed his fist into his armoured chest. "To Khorne I will give his skull, to Nurgle the contents of his slit belly, to Slaanesh his still-beating heart," he turned to Luregar, with a wicked grin that screamed of the victims he had claimed over the years, "and to your master, to great Tzeentch, I will give his last, dying breath."
"Forgive me, lord," he said, the thought of the offering to Tzeentch sending a thrill of ecstacy through his chest, "but how do you know the Herald will come for you?"
Wulfrik clapped a hand on Luregar's shoulder that nearly broke it out of its socket. "This way." He led Luregar back through the broken gates and down the streets to where a small group of norscan spearmen waited. "This is how," Wulfrik said, gesturing.
Luregar grinned. Perhaps fifty prisoners lay bound and guarded.
"When the Herald sees the blood eagles rise, then he will come and face me himself, and his death will bring me this city."
Luregar joined in the laughter of the barbarians. They laughed so hard that they didn't see one of the prisoners squirm and spit.
"Just wait, the Herald will turn your skull into paste you norscan scum!" hissed Ottilia through her swollen face and simmering hate. "Just wait!"