Scowling at the sight of the undead all around, Pavel Ivansget, Captain of the 11th Rodrigan Handgunners, was under strict orders to be politic. Strangers in a strange Realm, the 11th were part of one of several expeditionary forces sent out from Rodrigos, the Spiral City, to hunt down the traitors of Bretonsberg battle. Why his commander had allowed himself to get bogged down in this war he could not say, perhaps he had hoped that in making allies they could increase their chances of tracking down the Fighting Cocks and their renegade General. Perhaps he had come under pressure from the Bishop Martial, Petyr Pentecost. Either way here he was, playing nice with aelves, duardin, freeguilders from cities he had never heard of, and even Sylvaneth. He did not mind them so much, but the undead made his skin crawl. They were everywhere here at Riverwatch, cluttering the place up in a manner that he felt, somewhat ludicrously even to his own mind, was unhygienic.
Forced into a defensive posture at the insistence of their ally Lord Konrad of House Ashe, a damned Vampire of all things! Pavel and the 11th had spent their time patrolling the riverlands keeping an eye out for any signs of mobilisation by Lady Katarina Valencourt, currently their nearest threat. Reports of Konrad’s harrowing of the villages and people’s around the Valencourt lands trickled into Riverwatch and were disseminated amongst the allies there and from thence into the fortified encampment that Pavel and the 11th were stationed within.
The influx of troops into the old fortified citadel had been too much for it to contain, so many of the men and women of the various units now defending the Riverwatch lands had been allocated barracks in a large fortified encampment built close to the aelven citadel. It was from his tent here that he and several freeguilders had become acquainted and realised that they had similar concerns regarding their vampiric ally. The reports of Konrad’s actions left a sour taste. Pavel knew well that many of those put to the sword would have been innocent of anything but trying to live simple lives eking out an existence with what they were allowed to keep of the bounty of the Interstice. To see them killed, butchered in many instances, for swearing allegiance to one far more powerful than they could have hoped to resist was …distasteful. It was certainly not the Rodrigan way, and many of his colleagues, officers from other cities serving the Averlorn Alliance, shared his concerns.
And now this display. Pavel had not been ordered to attend, but the aelven commander of Riverwatch, General Anaerian, had made it clear that Konrad was to be indulged as much as possible, he was a rabid beast and could well take offence at the least imagined slight. Trying to be politic, but mostly just sulking at the back of the group of allied officers following the General, Pavel was not in a good mood, and the stench of the undead all around did not improve it any. The vampire lord wanted all to watch and no doubt behold with amazement, his prowess in battle. Today was the appointed time of his duel, arranged with Lady Valencourt and Pavel would rather have been almost anywhere else in the Mortal Realms than here, stroking the ego of the scion of House Ashe. Why was there never a good vampire hunter around when you needed one?
As he stood waiting with the General and the other officers, brooding, he gradually emerged from his thoughts realising that someone was calling his name. He turned and saw one of his men searching for him amongst the crowd, Handgunner Jacqueson, he thought, not usually one to waste his time or seek an officer for something that could be handled. He glanced over at Anaerian who flicked an aelvish eyebrow in what Pavel had learned to interpret as resignation and slight disgust at dealing with humans and took that as permission to leave and deal with whatever problem had cropped up in his brief absence. Edging out through the crowd, apologising for bumping into people and stepping on toes, literally and figuratively, he managed to worm his way out of the crowd and join the Handgunner.
“This better be important.” He growled at Jacqueson, trying to hide his delight at getting away from the smell and the crowds of undead and the unfamiliar. “I’m not making us any friends missing Konrad’s fight.” As they hurried away and then through the fortified gate to the temporary encampment, the living amongst the crowd made a noise, and glancing over his shoulder Pavel could see that the Valencourt’s had arrived. By the time he had reached his men, situated on the palisaded earthen walls overlooking the river valley, the duel had commenced.
It was an awesome sight, and the 11th stood for the most part in stunned, awed silence. Pavel found that he was actually in a far better spot now to see the duel and half regretted returning to the encampment, until the wind shifted slightly and he remembered the stink of the undead. To mere mortals the clash of Konrad and Lady Katrina was somewhat akin to watching a titanic duel between gods.
Pavel was briefly conscious that the spectacle of the Battle of Burning Skies, that terrible day many centuries ago when the gods had clashed against each other with armies of their mortal followers must have been a mind-shattering event for the mortals present fighting there. Undoubtedly a hundred, nay, a thousand times more frightening than this duel, but still it gave a hint as to the scenes those unfortunate mortals would have witnessed.
The bustle of the encampment fell away as people came to the walls to witness the extraordinary fight, and Pavel could see that the walls of Riverwatch were also lined with onlookers. The sheer skill, speed and ferocity of the combatants was mesmerising, and although Pavel retained a scowl of disapproval at the gawking, he could not stop it. Even after nearly a full lifetime of service in Rodrigos’ armed forces, he had rarely been witness to such great powers clashing. He was so absorbed with watching the vampires, that when Lady Valencourt called a halt Pavel felt he had not drawn a breath for an hour. The gusting sighs of men and women all along the palisade echoing his own made it clear he was not the only one.
It took him a moment to register the words that the vampires exchanged carrying on the still air but then the realisation of Konrad’s treachery stabbed through his heart like the piercing chill of shade-glass. With barely a backward glance, the treacherous cur turned his undead slaves on his erstwhile allies, leaving Riverwatch’s defences compromised in an instant. Standing up on the defensive palisade, Pavel had a prime vantage point from which to view the ensuing chaos as the undead turned and without hesitation attacked their former allies. There were hundreds of troops out there, his own men and women spared by the simple chance of being on watch during the duel. That had originally been a cause for much cursing and complaint, but it was a coincidence they now had reason to bless Sigmar’s mercy for.
Scanning the chaotic scenes below as people tried to flee back to Riverwatch, or even the less impressive defences of the earthen berm on which the palisade had been built, briefly he thought he saw General Anaerian, sword in hand cutting her way back to Riverwatch but in an instant he lost sight of her, amongst the confusion, possibly pulled down beneath the clawing hands of an innumerable horde of zombies and deathrattle. At a stroke, the commanding officers for the disparate forces at Riverwatch had been killed.
Lieutenant Von Keppler had him by the arm, screaming at him that they must run, flee, that Riverwatch was already lost and for a moment he wavered. A shameful moment. Then he shook the Lieutenant off, staring him down with an icy stare and ferocious scowl. It was not for nothing that the old Captain was known behind his back as “The Goat.” Hard-headed and stubborn, his instinct in a fight was always to plant his feet, stand firm and butt heads with the foe. “Return to your company Von Keppler and follow my lead.”
Looking down he could see that there had been undead within the encampment and they were running amok, slaughtering anyone they could get their hands on. The majority of Konrad’s forces moved on Riverwatch, but many were heading for the encampment with some already shambling through the fortified gates in a wave. ”’A’ Company!” He roared out. “By Sigmar’s Beard you’d better be ready to fight!” They raised an uncertain cheer, even these mainly inexperienced troops could see that things looked bleak and he felt a brief pang that this was to be their first and probably last battle. “We have faithful allies to support and some mangy undead to put back in the ground where they belong. To work! Let none think Rodrigos does not honour her commitments!” A stronger cheer, led by Jacqueson and some of the old veterans sprinkled in amongst his younger recruits. It was the best he was likely to get.
Shouting orders to his Lieutenants, including that buffoon Von Keppler, he nodded in open satisfaction as the first disciplined volley since the traitor Konrad had turned on the Alliance, rang out. “Again!” Another crashing volley, sweeping the gateway to the encampment clear of the undead, leaving the entrance littered with the stilled corpses of their new enemy. ‘B’ Company joined in, Von Keppler calling orders, his voice, shrill with panic, carrying to Pavel and for a brief moment the encampment was free from attack from outside. At his orders, the 11th Handgunners started to pick off the undead roaming around the camp.
The sudden, complete and unexpected betrayal had caught the Alliance forces by surprise. Within the palisaded walls Pavel could hear men and women calling out, as other units scrambled to form up, to bring the massed might of the freeguilders to bear. Desperately attempting to reassert order and discipline. Fire had broken out by the encampment gate but the scattered undead that had been within the camps walls had been winkled out and seemed to all have been put down. Over the way, clinging to the cliff face, Riverwatch itself had borne the brunt of the assault, and it seemed far more of the undead forces had already been within the walls of the proud aelven citadel. Her gateway stood gaping, as though the fortress itself was surprised, and screams and smoke billowed out from within. The noise of the undead legions marching grew louder as more companies swung away from Riverwatch and came towards the encampment.
“Jacqueson! Get those gates closed and someone put the fire out!” Orders were being shouted from all sides, questions and anxious calls in all accents and dialects. It seemed many of the Alliance officers had followed Anaerian’s “not-quite-an-order” to attend the duel, and the freeguilders were struggling with a lack of direction. The problem as he had pointed out to Knight Captain Gorfist (his commander stationed back at Doomshank Port) was the sheer breadth of allies. The incoherent command structure forced upon it by the broad swath of forces that had joined up. Riverwatch was a microcosm of this right now, as without General Anaerian to issue orders and direct the disparate forces of the Alliance, they quickly started to revert to looking out for themselves. Not likely to be a successful strategy for survival in these circumstances. In the face of the sudden and unanticipated betrayal, the Allies needed a strong hand on the tiller steering them in a common cause. Pavel could see that the shock attack had left many units reverting to type, fracturing their capacity to act in unison. Someone needed to take control here pretty sharpish or they would see desperately needed forces fleeing, damning the remainder to catastrophic defeat and an ugly death.
Weighing up his options didn’t take long. “You!” He snapped pointing to a nearby group of freeguild pikes milling around, a few turned toward him. “Do you want to live?” A tense pause and then mute nods. “Good, so do I. Get yourselves over to the gate, I’ve men there trying to secure it. Help them.” As they hurried off, the rattle of their armour and the now constant firing from up on the palisade by the 11th almost masked the noise of Brother Inigos’ Incarcerants forming up behind him.
Turning he was met by a series of gap toothed, lop-sided grins, mulish stares and insolent, disturbing expressions. Their leader, Prisoner-at-large Hjrolf Strike-Shank, a duardin with an obviously false name and demeanour impossible to gauge behind a bizarre, pristine white helmet, saluted with a fist to his chest.
“Captain. I told you we should have put a backdoor in.” Pavel frowned at the duardin. He never could tell whether he was joking or not, the full helmet made it difficult. The fact he was a duardin outcast and had been condemned to life in the mines of Rodrigos before having his sentence intermitted and joining Brother Inigo’s company made it all that much harder to take his measure.
“Axes, Strike-Shank. We’ll need to cut our way out before the undead surround us on all sides and make a run for it through the forests. We’ll be dead if we stay here.”
“We’ll be dead if we run Captain, they may not move the fastest but they’re relentless. I doubt you’ll get far before they catch up.”
“Leave me to worry about the running. Konrad and Valencourt have made a big mistake.” The duardin cocked in his head in obvious puzzlement. “They’ve walked away and left their minions to finish us off. Sloppy, unprofessional, smugly superior, exactly what I’d expect of a turncoat and a vampire. You don’t walk away from a fight until the other guy is on the floor. Now, get some axes and install us a backdoor please Prisoner-at-Large Strike-Shank.” The duardin saluted again and ran off, taking a few of his company of convicts with him, the rest drawing weapons and turning to face the encampment gate.
The noise at the gatehouse reached a sudden crescendo as the second wave of the undead legions crashed against the timbered gate. With shouts of dismay the freeguild pikemen were forced back as the gates were slowly pried open and the undead began at first to trickle and then stream into the camp, the remaining members of Brother Inigo’s Incarcerants running forward to stem the flow of bodies.
Yelling up at the 11th Handgunners, Pavel called them down from the walls, having them form up in the main track through the camp facing the gateway. “Ready yourselves!” Glancing back and seeing that their predicament had been noted, Jacqueson called for his handful of men of the 11th, the pikemen and the Incarcerants to make a run for the dubious safety at the side of the Rodrigan troops.
With a wrenching squeal the gates were torn from their hinges and Konrad’s undead surged inwards like a boiling tide, seeking their prey. Firing rank by rank, slowly giving ground, the 11th held the undead off at a distance, with the pikeman and Incarcerants stepping in when the corpse legions were in numbers too great for a volley to halt.
The pikemen and Brother Inigo’s convicts began clashing regularly with the undead as their numbers continued to grow. The 11th and the other Alliance troops drew back as more and more poured in through the gate rushing to close with anyone living. Pavel found that as they performed their fighting retreat, the other freeguild companies within the camp were drawn to his side or driven there by the press of the undead.
It was time to run, even a stubborn goat doesn’t face up to a Dracoline. Riverwatch was dead. It was clear from the last time Pavel had been able to take a good look that the citadel had been scoured clear of any of the living. Whether the fires would do enough damage to render the fortress unusable was hard to say, certainly it seemed that the last of its defenders had resorted to fire to try and hold the undead at bay. It seemed likely that the encampment would also burn down as well, the fires once again raging unchecked around the now abandoned gatehouse.
Defeat here was inevitable. But with luck, Sigmar’s grace and the magic of the Druid of Rodrigos, they might just manage to escape with their lives. An unexpected benefit of the gate being breached was that the undead tried to force their way through into the camp at that point. As long as they could get in then they weren’t making any effort to surround the palisade walls and thus the shocked and battered remnants of the Alliance forces at Riverwatch slipped away through a wide breach at the rear, hacked through by Strike-Shank and his convicts.
The problem, Pavel was starting to realise, was that as the Alliance numbers in the encampment dropped, the undead came closer and closer to overwhelming those forces remaining, trying to hold the hole in the palisade long enough to escape through. “Strike-Shank!” The duardin moved through the press of the defender’s bodies to Pavel’s side. “How long could you hold the breach?” The impassive mask looked over at him briefly as the duardin’s scythe flashed out, hewing down several zombies in one strike. The crash of another volley drove the undead horde back a few steps buying the defenders precious extra seconds of life.
“Till death Captain.” A brutally honest answer, but not perhaps, the most helpful.
“I have no doubt of that.” Pavel sighed. “Forty heartbeats?”
Scythe flashing out to cut across the midriff of two more zombies who fell to the ground screeching, the duardin nodded. “Aye, forty beats of my heart manling.” The handgunners fired again, the smoke rolling out along their line, faces smudged black from the incessant firing.
The orders were given, the 11th were to fire another volley and then retreat through the breach. Brother Inigo’s Incarcerants would cover their withdrawal for the span of forty beats of the heart before making their own withdrawal which the 11th would cover from their next position.
The howling zombies and intimidating deathrattle struck forward again and were met once more with the black powder weapons of the 11th Rodrigan Handgunners. Driven back, but now in such numbers that they were advancing again almost before the 11th had put up their weapons.
“Strike-Shank!” Pavel yelled as they withdrew, “Make it twenty-five! And don’t die!”
As they ran from the encampment the 11th could hear the battle cries of Strike-Shank and his unit above the noise of the undead hordes. Clear of the camp and hidden just within the treeline Pavel ordered a halt, the 11th reformed their line and waited to cover the retreat of the duardin and his Incarcerants.
Moments ticked by, Pavel’s heart was like thunder from his exertions so he was unsure how long had passed. He began to fear that the convicts had been overwhelmed but no undead came through the hole in the palisade either. As he stood to return to the breach, to see what was happening, they came staggering through the palisade, many clearly wounded. Strike-Shank ran at the rear trying to protect those of his company that remained. They had been horribly mauled, and Pavel had to steel his heart at the sight of less than half of the men returning. Inigo’s Incarcerants were spared death and lifetime imprisonment on the understanding that they would fight and lay their life on the line for Rodrigos if needed. But the loss of so many men struck Pavel hard, he had not lost so many of his own command in a battle since the fiasco in the Blackjoy mountains, many years ago..
As the undead emerged in pursuit the 11th fired as though touched by Sigmar, every shot finding it’s mark. Before today the convicts had been other, untrustworthy convicts and strangers to the 11th. Now by their terrible and bloody sacrifice they were comrades in arms and to the handgunners the price paid for their own survival would not be forgotten.
At Pavel’s shout, the ragged and smoke blackened men and women remaining of the 11th raced away through the thick forest, following the tracks of the Alliance freeguilders who had passed this way earlier and as he ran, Pavel angrily accosted Strike-Shank, more out of guilt than genuine anger.
“Dammit dwarf! I said twenty-five heartbeats! What were you thinking?”
“Twenty-five beats of my heart manling.” The impassive white mask stared at him, then reaching out grabbed his hand and held it to his wrist. The duardin’s pulse beat slow and steady, extremely slowly. Pavel cursed, long and loud as he realised that the duardin’s heart rate was far slower than his own, even after fighting for his life and fleeing the mindless legions of the traitor Konrad. “Now, you said to leave worrying about the running to you?” He nodded back to the edge of the forest where the undead were starting to push through the undergrowth into the forest.
Pavel grinned nervously. “Oh yes.” Each of the Rodrigan expeditionary forces had been as well equipped as was possible. Amongst the supplies of black powder, arrows and food, were more puissant items. Entrusted to Knight Captain Gorfist by the mighty Druid of Rodrigos, the Last Truthsayer of Albion, was an item thought to be useful to their expedition. Gorfist had passed it on to Pavel, almost impulsively, when they had parted ways at Doomshank.
He held up a granite pebble, covered all over in carvings of spirals that seemed to glisten and gleam in the dim light of the forest. They ebbed and flowed slowly, like the eerie drift of fog shifting position, and seemed to occupy more dimensions than the eye could comprehend. Pavel muttered almost too quietly for the duardin to hear. “By Sigmar I hope this works.” And breathed out over the pebble.
A dense fog rolled in, down the forested hillsides and thickening between Pavel and the undead forces starting to enter the woods in greater numbers. As the Alliance troops retreated further into the forests, the fog continued to mass behind them and many of the weaker undead creatures had their souls unentwined from their bodies, leaving behind motionless piles of rotting flesh or polished bone. The mists and fogs of long forgotten Albion, summoned by the magics of its last Druid, enveloped their pursuers, stymying them, turning them in circles, and baffling those with minds to think. Whenever they chanced to draw near to the fleeing freeguilders they were gently diverted away before becoming lost in the mist-shrouded forests allowing the battered remnants of the Alliance forces to make good their miraculous escape.
Still, they had suffered terrible losses all told. Not only during their fight to escape the noose of the undead forces at the encampment, but also their comrades killed before their eyes having ventured out to watch the vampire’s duel and those who had been trapped within the aelven fastness of Riverwatch.
Pavel burned with thoughts of revenge on the traitor vampire Lord Konrad. The Captain’s pride smarted at the memory of Konrad’s laughing as he left without a backward glance at the men and women he had condemned to a horrible death. When they were finally free of pursuit and felt it safe to take some rest, he sat plotting a campaign to sap the strength of the Ashe/Valencourt alliance. Striking swiftly and silently from the shadows of the forests, leading daring raids to hinder the vampires and slow their treacherous assault on Avelorn. He was stubborn, but not stupid, they had not the numbers to fight a pitched battle and so ‘the Goat’ planned a guerrilla war against the undead. He had found his ground, now it was time to plant his feet, stand firm upon it and butt heads with a vampire.
