01 - The Burning Shore (39 page)

When the attack stopped it seemed like a miracle. One moment the Bretonnians
were fighting tooth and claw with an endless tide of the horrors. A moment later
and the lizardmen were drawing back.

The defenders let their arms droop, snatching the couple of seconds’ rest the
respite gave them, and then, with a single, shrill chirrup of command, the
attacking swarm split into two columns and streamed away to either side.

A wild cheer went up from the humans’ line, exultant despite the jagged edge
of exhaustion and shock. It climbed higher as the last of the skinks burst into
a sprint, the wordless roar interspersed with jeers and insults. Then the last
rank of them melted away, and the Bretonnians fell suddenly silent.

Expressions of joy melted into grey masks of shock, raised fists were
lowered, stomachs grew heavy with despair. Even Florin, hardened by his hatred
of his erstwhile captors, felt the fight bleeding out of him as he realized that
this was no victory.

This was just the beginning, the calm before the storm of the lizardmen’s
true assault.

The great bone plates of their wide-jawed heads towering over the scattering
flotsam of their lesser brethren, their taloned feet beating the earth in
perfect step, a single, vast column of saurus marched into view. Their armoured
hides were untouched by shrapnel or bullet, and their bulging muscles were
untired by any combat. As fresh as a new dawn they hurried to do one-sided
battle against their exhausted foe.

Florin knew now why the skinks had fled when they had. It was a tactic he’d
seen often enough in the bar brawls of Bordeleaux. They called it a switch and
cut, a muggers’ trick whereby one man ducked out of the way a second before his
mate’s cosh came swinging through the space where he’d been standing.

The skinks had been the cover. The saurus were the cosh.

There was no doubting who the victim would be.

Florin spat and swore, and tried to look confident.

“Looks like we’re in for another round, men,” he said, holding his voice
steady in an iron grip of manufactured confidence “We’ll cut through this lot
like we did their mates. Let’s close those ranks.”

Much good it would do them, though. This time the channelled melee would go
against the men, that much was certain. In the messy, face to face butchery of
the palisades the saurus had every advantage—strength, ferocity and sheer
brute force. They had the weapons, too, great sickle-bladed swords and chitinous
shields that glinted in the sun like the doors of one of the hells.

“Gunners,” Orbrant called as the saurus, their pace neither rushed nor
hesitant, approached to within the last hundred yards. “Gunners to form a back
rank. Come on, come on. Keep those heathen temples clear of the little ’uns, or
at least keep their heads down. I’ll keep the palisade clear.”

So saying the Sigmarite strode forward, the boisterous grin which creased his
face making him look younger. Stronger. He found his place in the decimated line
of defenders, cut the air with his warhammer like a cat with its tail, and
punched the man beside him on the arm.

“Are you ready?” he asked him, eyes alight with an unholy joy.

“Yes, sergeant,” the man muttered miserably, his own eyes locked on the
advancing monsters. Somehow they seemed to be grinning.

“I said,” Orbrant repeated menacingly, “are you ready?”

“Yes, sergeant,” This time the man tore his eyes away from the foe for long
enough to look at his officer.

“What?” Orbrant snapped.

“Yes,” the man dared to snap back.

“Are you ready?” Orbrant snarled, teeth bared.

“Yes,” he bellowed.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes!” More voices were raised in answer to the question and Orbrant, seeming
to swell with a terrible energy, chuckled.

“Are you ready?” he roared, lifting his warhammer aloft so that sunlight
flared from the gromril of its construction, as white and blinding as a banner
of the Sigmar himself.

“Yeeeeessss!” the men roared back, the fire of the warrior priest’s burning
spirit leaping amongst them as a flame leaps from one straw thatch to the next.
The hairs lifted on the napes of their necks. Their spines straightened. They
lifted weapons that felt suddenly light, and their faces split open in death’s
head grins. Orbrant watched them with a terrible pride, seeing in their battered bodies and ugly
faces the presence of his god.

By all that’s holy, he thought, thank Sigmar for the gift of war.

And he prepared for the charge.

Van Delft had watched the lizardmen’s assault unfolding with a professional
detachment; a certain admiration, even. The enemy had launched four perfectly
synchronized attacks, the separate groups not only emerging from the tree-line
at the same time, but managing to time the impacts of their charges almost to
the second.

If it hadn’t been for Thorgrimm’s fortifications van Delft had no doubt that
the first wave would have annihilated his little army, washing away his
formations as easily as a rising tide destroys a sandcastle.

As it was the flanks held, just. The Tileans had balked once, but a
well-timed volley from the dwarfs’ gunners had given them the breathing space
they’d needed to regroup under their captain’s passionate entreaties.

The Marienburgers had fared a little better, their well equipped and expertly
disciplined ranks forming a meat grinder into which the enemy hurled themselves
with suicidal courage. The Bretonnians had done just as well, although their
losses had been heavier. Fully a quarter of their number lay dying across their
palisade, and the rest were so blood-soaked that the gore almost seemed to be a
regimental marking.

But the real surprise had been the Kislevites. Despite their captain’s
obvious reluctance to lead from the front they had fought like daemons. Their
barbaric Ulrician battle hymns had cleaved the air as their axes had cleaved the
enemy, the razored blades chopping through their ranks with the easy confidence
of lumberjacks felling trees.

It was no surprise then that the real attack, when it came, came against the
Bretonnians.

If van Delft had dared to hope, that folly left him when he saw the enemies’
true warriors. The massive reptiles that came marching out of the jungle in a
single, well ordered column were every inch the horrors that Florin had
described. Taller than men, their massive heads flared back from their snouts
like arrowheads, the weapons they carried seemed almost superfluous.

Van Delft realized that his jaw had fallen open whilst he’d been watching
them. He snapped it shut.

“Captain Thorgrimm. I have a new target for you.”

The dwarf, who’d been busily pacing up and down the ranks of his gunners,
tossing his axe from hand to hand with bloodthirsty impatience, turned and
followed van Delft’s gaze.

“Yes,” he nodded, as he saw the vast column of saurus warriors. “They could
do with a bit of softening up.”

He spat a stream of orders at the cannon crew, the language as hard and
flinty as the stone of the temple upon which they stood, then stooped to help
them drag the weapon to a new position.

The first shot rang out a moment later, the cannon vomiting out a blur of
iron. It whistled over the Bretonnians’ heads, bounced on the churned-up earth
beyond them, and sliced through the saurus’ ranks as uselessly as a razor
through a slab of ham.

Without waiting for the order the dwarfs were already swabbing out the
barrel, ready for the next shot, but van Delft knew that it wasn’t going to be
enough. Turning away from the Bretonnians he looked suspiciously at the southern
tree-line. It seemed to be empty. Seemed to be.

The Colonel bit his lip and cursed himself for not having used more time
clearing the obscuring undergrowth. He wanted to take men from the remaining
three flanks upon which the skink charge had faltered, yet if he did, how could
he know that another attack wouldn’t fall upon the weakened defences?

He tugged at the tips of his moustaches and turned back to watch the saurus
as they advanced towards the remnant of d’Artaud’s command. Even above the din
of battle he could feel their feet beating the constant, remorseless rhythm of
an executioner’s drum roll.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes in silent prayer.

“Sigmar be with me,” he muttered, his hand closing around the hard edges of
the hammer talisman he wore beneath his uniform. His daughters had given it to
him a decade ago, and although he’d mocked them for being so generous with his
money, he had come to treasure the tiny memento.

“Be with me.”

The sounds of battle faded. A moment passed, long and silent. He opened his
eyes again, and the world had become clear, his decision obvious. After all,
what other choice did he have?

“Lorenzo,” he said, singling out the Bretonnian from the runners that stood
waiting for his orders. “Go back to your unit. I don’t need you here anymore.
And you other three, go back to your units and tell your captains that every other man’s to go to the Bretonnian line. Once
there they’ll serve under d’Artaud. Got it? Good. Well, go on then!”

Van Delft watched them scurry away, secure in the knowledge that for the
moment, he had done his duty. He stepped back and almost trod on Kereveld.

“Ah, there you are…” the Colonel began, then stopped. The wizard’s bony old
body might be there, but his mind was far, far away. His eyes were rolled up
like a dead man’s, his skin as pale as death. In fact, the only sign that he was
still a living man and not some standing corpse was the movement of his lips as
they whispered silent gibberish, and the spasmodic twitching of his fingers.

Van Delft remembered the devastation that Kereveld had caused last time he’d
practised his godless art, and for a second he considered shaking the wizard out
of his trance.

A second later he thought better of it. After all, what did they have to
lose?

Miles above him, bright in the dark void where sky met space, energies burst
into life as spontaneously as matches left in tropical sunlight. At first no
more than sparks they grew stronger and hotter, fluttering around one another
like newly hatched chicks in a nest. Eventually each of the sparks joined the
others, coalescing into a single mass that slowly began to descend towards the
world below.

If Florin had made the decision he would have waited behind the barricade.
Despite the fact that the ditch was now filled with a mass of the dying and the
dead, and despite the fact that most of the defensive stakes had long since been
pulled down into a tangled mess of splintered wood, the bank at least remained,
giving the defenders some small advantage of height.

Yes, had Florin made the decision his men would have waited for the impact of
the saurus onslaught, and would have been scattered before it like autumn leaves
before a winter storm.

But Florin didn’t make the decision. Orbrant did.

He waited until the saurus were near enough to spit on and then, with an
animal roar of fanatical hatred, he vaulted over the palisade and charged.

The Bretonnians followed. Caught up in the invisible storm of the Sigmarite’s
energy they had little choice. Perhaps it was because of the warrior priest’s
savage oratory, or perhaps it was because of some other, more subtle magic. But for whatever reason in that moment, in
that one, glorious moment, they became all that they had ever dreamed of being.

Battered and bruised, rotten of tooth and vicious of habit, the score of
mercenaries fell upon their foes with the righteous wrath of the heroes of old.
They hurled themselves against the advancing horde, meeting it with the
bone-shattering impact of a fist meeting a sledgehammer’s swing.

And yet, incredibly, it was the saurus who faltered. The spirit which had
possessed the Bretonnians seemed to blind them to the fact that their enemies
were massive, iron-scaled, invincible.

Thus forgetful of their weakness they scythed through the first rank of
lizards, their halberds and swords biting deeply through their scaled hides with
a keen-edged hunger.

A dozen reptiles were felled by that first, crazed impact. A dozen more
thrown back bloodied and dazed by the ferocity of the charge. Orbrant, his
ragged robes flapping around him like a bloodied storm cloud, seemed to be
everywhere, the silver blur of his warhammer smiting through his foes like
lightning.

Now he was hammering down the bearer of the enemies’ blasphemous standard,
smashing the totem in half and crushing the armoured skull of its bearer on the
backstroke.

Now he was stooping to drag a man free of the saurus he’d killed, picking the
mercenary up by the scruff of his neck as though he were no heavier than a pup
and throwing him back into the fight.

Now he was singing a deep throated battle hymn that reverberated in the bones
of all who heard it, the savage chant punctuated by the constant metronome of
gromril splintering bone.

But Orbrant was only one man, and the saurus were legion. As the shock of the
charge wore off they pushed forward, their strength waxing as the defenders’
waned.

Florin snatched bloody glimpses of the turning tide as he fought. Beneath the
total concentration and numbing stupidity of combat he knew that he should be
thinking of a plan. He ducked and parried, his wrist flaring in pain as it was
bent backwards, and a snarling mouthful of curved teeth lunged for his throat.

He let himself fall back away from the attack, gripping the cold iron of his
assailant’s arm and stabbing the sharpened point of his machete into its belly.
His entire weight travelled through the blow, driving the steel home with a
force that would have gutted a pig.

It didn’t gut the saurus. With a bellow of pain it smashed Florin to one side
with the leather disc of its shield, sending him sprawling over the cooling body
of one of his comrades. Stars span through his field of vision as he watched the
saurus pluck the blade out of its torso and throw it to one side with a
contemptuous snarl.