This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it isa land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forestsand vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reignsthe Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of thefounder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands ofthe Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  Come out, young man! The spirits sing

  And see what war has bread

  The grave mounds of the living

  And the riders of the dead

  - from a Kislevite banner song

  DEMILANCE

  I

  Vatzl to Durberg, Durberg to Harnstadt, Harnstadt to Brodny, in one furious week, in one laborious gallop, a double line of helmet cockades and lance banners bobbing and fluttering.

  A rest stop at Brodny, then out, into the edges of the oblast itself. After Brodny, all the place names began to change, for there the Empire slipped away behind them like a flying cloak cut loose.

  The sparse haunches of Kislev lay before them.

  To the west, the dogtooth line of the Middle Mountains, receding into violet haze. The sky, light and clear like glass. Endless acres of green crops, hissing in the wind. Grasslands riven with gorse and thistle. Larks singing, so high up they were invisible.

  Brodny to Emsk, Emsk to Gorovny, Gorovny to Choika, through numerous oblast villages that no one had time to name, tiny hamlets where rough wooden izbas clustered around lonely shrines.

  On the track, the massed columns of infantry under standards, each trailing behind itself a long baggage train like the tail of a comet. Ox-teams, kitchen wagons, tinkers with barrows, victuallers with heavy drays of kegs and barrels, muleteers, war carts piled with pike-shafts, stakes, firewood and unfletched arrows, all plodding north. The convoys of engineers, hauling the great gun carriages and the pannier trucks of shot and powder with oxen and draft horse, struggling with block and tackle where iron wheels fouled in the mud. Halberdiers and pikemen, in file, looking from a distance like winter forests on the move. Marching songs. A thousand voices, making the oblast ring. A hundred thousand.

  The Empire was lowering its head and squaring up for war.

  For that was the spring of the Year That No One Forgets. The dreadful year of waste and plight and hardship, when the North rose as never before and plunged its several hordes like lances into the flanks of the world. It was the two thousand five hundred and twenty-first year marked on the Imperial calendar since the Heldenhammer and the Twelve Tribes founded the Empire with sinew and steel. It was the age of Karl Franz, the Conclave of Light – and Archaon.

  II

  At Choika, where the river was wide and slow, they rested their horses a day. The people there regarded them in a sullen manner, unimpressed by the sight of fifty Imperial demilancers jogging two abreast into the town square. Every horse was a heavy gelding, chestnut, black or grey; every man dressed in gleaming half-plate and lobster-tail burgonet. A light lance stood vertical in every right hand. A brace of pistols or a petronel bounced at every saddle.

  The clarion gave double notes with his horn, long and short, and the troop flourished lances and dismounted with a clatter of metal plate. Girths were loosened, withers patted and rubbed.

  The company officer was a thirty-two year old captain-of-horse called Meinhart Stouer. He removed his burgonet and held it by the chinstraps as he knocked grass burrs out of its comb of feathers.

  Thus occupied, he barked sidelong at the clarion. ‘Karl! Find out what this town is called!’

  ‘It’s Choika, captain,’ the young man replied, buckling his gleaming silver bugle back into its saddle holster.

  ‘You know these things of course,’ smiled Stouer. ‘And the river?’

  ‘The Lynsk, captain.’

  The captain raised his gloved hands wide like a supplicant and the lancers around him laughed. ‘May Sigmar save me from educated men!’

  The clarion’s name was Karl Reiner Vollen. He was twenty years old, and took the teasing with a shrug. Stouer wouldn’t have asked if he hadn’t expected Vollen to know.

  The company’s supply wagons, with their escort of six lances, rattled belatedly into the square and drew up behind the lines of horse. Stouer acknowledged their arrival and limped over to the well fountain. He was stiff-legged and sore from the saddle. He tucked off a leather riding glove, cupped it in his hand, and splashed water from the low stone basin over his face. Then he rinsed his mouth and spat brown liquid onto the ground. Beads of water twinkled in his thick, pointed beard.

  ‘Sebold! Odamar! Negotiate some feed for the mounts. Don’t let them rob you. Gerlach! Negotiate some feed for us. The same applies. Take Karl with you. He probably speaks the damn language too! If he does, buy him beer. Blowing that horn and thinking hard is thirsty work.’

  Gerlach Heileman carried the company’s standard, a role that earned him pay-and-a-half and the title of vexillary. The standard was a stout ash pole three spans long. The haft was worked in gilt and wrapped in leather bands. On its tip was a screaming dragon head made of brass, from the back of which depended two swallowtails of cloth. These symbolised the Star With the Pair of Tails. Under this astrological omen, the great epochs of the Empire had been baptised. Some said it had been seen again, in these last few seasons.

  Beneath the brass draco was a cross-spar supporting the painted banner of the company, a heavy linen square edged in a passementerie of gold brocade. A leopard’s pelt hung down behind the banner and parchment extracts from the Sigmarite gospel were pinned by rosette seals around its hem. The banner’s fields were the red and white of Talabheim, and it showed, in gold and green, the motifs of that great city-state: the wood-axe and the trifoil leaf, either side of the Imperial hammer. A great winged wyrm coiled around the hammer’s grip.

  Gerlach kissed the haft of the standard and passed it to the demilancer holding his horse. Removing his helmet and gloves, he nodded over at the clarion.

  The pair walked together across the square, their half-armour clinking. Long boots of buff leather encased the legs of every demilancer to the thigh. From there to the neck, they wore polished silver suits of articulated plate over a coat of felt-lined ringmail. The horse company was a prestigious troop, recruited from the landed nobility, unlike the levies or the standing armies of the state, and so each demilancer was required to provide for his own arming. Their armour reflected this, and the subtle nuances of each rider’s status. Gerlach Heileman was the second son of Sigbrecht Heileman, a sworn and spurred knight of the Order of the Red Shield, the bodyguard of Talabheim’s elector count. Once he had served his probation in the demilance company, Gerlach could expect to join his father and elder brother in that noble order. His half-armour matched those rich expectations. The panels were etched and worked to mimic the puffed and slashed cut of courtly velvet and damask, and his cuirass was in an elegant waistcoat style that fastened down the front.

  Though outwardly similar, Karl Reiner Vollen’s half-armour was much plainer and more traditional. He could trace his lineage back to the nobility of Solland, but that heritage had been reduced to ashes in the war of 1707. Since then, dispossessed and penniless, his family had served as retainers to the household of their cousins – the Heilemans. Gerlach was two years Karl’s senior, but they had grown up within the same walls, schooled by the same tutors, trained by the same men-at-arms.

  Yet a world of difference existed between them, and it was about to get much wider.

  III

  The pine dwellings of Choika-on-the-Lynsk bore roofs of grey aspen shingles that overlapped to give the appearance of scales. There had been a town here for a thousand years. This incarnation had stood for two centuries, since the razing of the previous version in the time of Magnus the Pious. Dry and old and dark, it would burn quickly when the hour came.

  Vollen and Heileman walked under low gables into the gloomy hall that served as the town’s inn. Ingots of malachite were inlaid around the door posts, and the lintel was hung with charms, sprigs of herbs, and aged, wooden-soled ice skates.

  Under its roof of smoke-blacked tie-beams, the hall was dark. The compressed earth floor was strewn with dirty rushes, and there was an ill-matched variety of benches, stools and trestles placed about. Wood smoke fouled the close air, and twisted in the light cast by the window slits. Vollen could smell spices and spit-meat, vinegar and hops. Heileman couldn’t smell anything that didn’t offend his nose.

  Three long-bearded old men, grouped around a painted table, looked up from the thimble cups of samogon they were warming in art
hritic hands. Their hooded eyes were deep-set in their crinkled faces, and utterly noncommittal.

  ‘Hail and met, fathers,’ said Heileman, perfunctorily. ‘Where is the inn host?’

  The eyes continued to twinkle without blinking.

  ‘I said, fathers, the inn host? Where is the inn host?’

  There was no reply, nor any sense that they had even heard his words.

  Heileman mimed supping a drink and rubbing his belly.

  Karl Reiner Vollen turned away. He had little time for Gerlach Heileman’s arrogance, or his condescending pantomimes. He saw a huge broadsword hanging on the wall and looked at that instead. Its blade was mottled with rust. It was a Kislev weapon, a double-edged longsword of the Gospodar, deep-fullered and heavy-quilloned. A shashka, he believed they were called.

  ‘What is you here?’ asked a deep voice. Vollen turned back, expecting a man, but saw instead a heavy, sallow woman who had emerged from the back room, hugging a round-tipped serving knife to her streaked apron. Her eyes were permanently narrowed to slits by the ample flesh of her face. She stared at Gerlach.

  ‘Food? Drink?’ Gerlach said.

  ‘Is no of food, is no of drink,’ she told him.

  ‘I can smell it,’ he insisted.

  She shrugged, humping up the slopes of her thick shoulders under her shawl.

  ‘Is wood burns.’

  ‘You miserable old mare!’ snapped Gerlach. He tore a kid-skin pouch from his belt and emptied it onto the floor. Silver Empire coins bounced and skittered in the dirty rushes. ‘I’ve sixty-two hungry, thirsty men out there! Sixty-two! And there’s not a wretch in this ditch-town fit to clean the boots of any of them!’

  ‘Gerlach…’ Vollen said.

  ‘Get off, Karl!’ A blush was rising in Heileman’s neck, the sign of his ugly temper. He closed on the flabby woman, then suddenly stooped and snatched up a coin. Holding it between finger and thumb, he pushed it at her face.

  ‘See there? His Holy Majesty Karl Franz! On his orders we’ve come here, to take up arms and save this bloody backwater! You’d think you’d be grateful! You’d think you’d be happy to feed us and keep us warm so we might be fit and ready to guard your souls! I don’t know why we didn’t just leave you to burn!’

  The woman surprised Gerlach. She didn’t recoil. She lunged at him, slapping the coin out of his hand so hard it pinged away across the inn. She shouted a stream of curses into his face; a torrential proclamation in the harsh language of Kislev.

  As she did so, she waved the serving knife expressively.

  Gerlach Heileman backed away a step. He reached for his dagger.

  Vollen interposed himself between them. ‘Enough!’ he snapped at Gerlach, pushing him backwards with one hand. ‘Enough, mother!’ he added, waving at her to calm down.

  Gerlach walked away with a dismissive oath, and Vollen turned squarely to face the woman. He kept his hands raised and open to reassure her.

  ‘We need food and drink, and we will pay for both,’ he told her slowly.

  ‘Is no of food, is no of drink!’ she repeated.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Is gone all! Taked!’

  She beckoned him with a rapid, snapping gesture and led him into a little side room where sacks of rye were piled up. There was a wooden coffer perched on the sacks. She lifted the lid and showed Vollen what was inside.

  It was full to the brim with Empire coins. Enough to make the chests of most company paymasters look meagre.

  She raked her fat fingers through the silver. ‘Taked!’ she repeated firmly.

  ‘Tell me how,’ he said.

  IV

  In the course of the previous week, seven Imperial units had passed through Choika. The first had been another company of demilancers, and from her description, they were the Jagers of Altdorf. The folk of Choika had welcomed them and seen to all their needs: meat, sup, bedding, fodder. They had welcomed all seventy of them like brothers.

  Two days later, an infantry column of nine hundred men from Wissenland arrived – pikemen mostly, but a fair number of arquebusiers. On their heels, two hundred more pikes from Nordland, and a train of cannon from Nuln. That night, the population of Choika had almost doubled.

  Barely had these gone when another infantry mass marched in. Archers, arquebusiers and halberdiers, wearing yellow and black, she said, so that probably meant Averland.

  Then sixty great fellows from Carroburg, shouldering their massive hand-and-a-half swords like polearms. After them, nigh on fifteen hundred Imperial levies, who drank so much they almost rioted.

  A day behind the levies, thirty Knights Panther. These were the most impressive, she admitted, tall and armoured like princes. They were courteous and deserved much respect but, by then, the novelty had worn off.

  Choika had been wrung dry.

  ‘There’s barely enough food left to see the town until harvest,’ Vollen said. ‘Wave as much damn money as you like, there’s nothing to buy.’

  They were standing out under the gables of the inn. Heileman turned slowly to face Vollen.

  ‘I smelt cooking. It was rank, but it was food.’

  Vollen shook his head. ‘They’re cooking for the town. Pooling what they have left. Our advance has even taken most of their firewood. What you could smell was supper for the entire place, roasting over the one fire they can afford.’

  ‘We’ll take that, then,’ said Gerlach simply.

  ‘You want them to starve?’

  ‘If we starve, they’ll be dead. Burned and split and raped when the Northers come in, with us too empty-bellied to stop it.’

  Vollen shrugged.

  ‘I’m not going to say anything to the captain, not this time,’ said Heileman.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In respect of our association. I won’t say anything.’

  ‘About what?’ Vollen asked.

  Heileman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Damn you, Vollen! You showed me disrespect in there! I am vexillary! Second officer! No junior horse shows me up like that! You forget yourself, sometimes, and I’m man enough to appreciate why.’

  Vollen reined himself in. He knew better than to push it. ‘I am honoured by your kinship, vexillary. I will mind my place.’

  Heileman bit his lip and nodded, shifting away. ‘Good, Karl, that’s good. I’d hate for you to forget you’re only here because of me.’

  Karl Reiner Vollen felt himself tense. It took considerable will to fight back the desire to swing for Gerlach Heileman. The conceited bastard…

  Captain Stouer hallooed them from across the square. They walked together, over the cobbles, to rejoin him.

  V

  Handing over the reins of his gelding to one of the troop, Stouer watched as Heileman and Vollen approached him from the inn.

  Stouer knew his vexillary looked forward to great things in his future. Heileman had the blood for it, after all, and the connections. Another summer or two and he would be a Knight of the Red Shield, or spurred to some other great order at least, part of an elector’s life company. He looked the part. Heavy set and over two spans tall, with fair hair shaved short and a trimmed beard that grew white-blond. Noble of bearing and hazel-eyed, he had exactly the frame you expected to see filling a full suit of silver-steel plate, exactly the face you hoped to find behind the close-helm’s visor.

  The clarion, though. Ahh, Vollen. Like Heileman, a gifted horseman, and just as tenacious. But his future was not so bright. It was all down to blood. Vollen didn’t have the lineage, or the connections. He might make captain of a state troop eventually, but that was about it. But for the recommendation of Herr Sigbrecht Heileman, Vollen wouldn’t even have got a position in the demilancer company.

  Vollen was a head shorter than Gerlach Heileman, and as dark as Heileman was fair. He was clean-shaven, like a boy, and his jaw jutted forward pugnaciously. His eyes were as blue as a summer sky. He was the most learned soldier Stouer had ever had the pleasure of commanding. Even the most noble-born sons riding in the horse troop were only partially literate, and Stouer had never had much of letters himself. Vollen had studied hard under his tutors and it showed. It was probably an effort to compensate for his lack of status.