Gathek, another of Uldin’s men, suddenly rose above the turmoil of bodies. He was impaled on a pike that had lifted him, kicking, off his saddle. The pike shaft snapped, and Gathek’s corpse fell back into the crush.

  A sword struck against Karl’s shield, and he wrenched round, burying his speartip in the swordsman’s cuirass. It wedged fast, and was tugged from his hand. He was unarmed now, and forced to weather the assault of the Imperial infantry with only a shield. His only weapon was his horse, and he drove it forward, head down, so its lashing hooves would batter and break limbs.

  The rain seemed as heavy as a waterfall now. Lightning seared the dark sky and whipped down into the earth, exploding the ground amongst the Empire’s rear ranks. The storm, it seemed, fought for Surtha Lenk’s cause too; it was repaying the bombardment of the Imperial cannon.

  For a moment, Karl caught sight of other shapes through the rain and vapour. Giant shadows loomed above the height of the men: bestial nightmares that howled into the deluge and tore into the Imperial forces with talons and claws. One seemed to have wings that spread from its shoulders like sails. Another, too grotesque to comprehend, had a great bird’s beak.

  Karl’s shield was half shredded now, and his mare’s flanks were gashed and torn. He pushed on, trampling men underfoot, and at last broke clear into the field behind the Imperial array. Efgul, Yuskel and eight other riders came through with him, then came Lyr, Berlas and Uldin himself a moment later.

  The men of the Empire were already fleeing. They could be seen scattering singly or in small groups down across the field in the direction of Aachden, weapons and armour thrown down in their wake. Loose war hounds were chasing some, and pulling those they caught down, screaming.

  ‘Leave them!’ Uldin bellowed. He swung the riders about as still more joined them, then drove in towards the enemy’s rear ranks.

  ‘Azytzeen!’ Efgul shouted. He rode up close to Karl and gave him his saddle-sword, a falchion with a wooden grip and a billed tip. Karl took it and ran his horse after Uldin’s. Hzaer’s carnyx boomed.

  The warband hurtled north, crossing the breaking flight of the Imperial bodies. They despatched those that came in reach as they thundered through. Karl tested Efgul’s cutting sword on the head of a fleeing archer and found it was not wanting an edge.

  An Imperial horse troop met the warband coming the other way. The Imperial commander had sent them to staunch the flow of deserters haemorrhaging from the back files. They were demilancers, their half-armour flashing and their cockades bobbing as they rode down the field, standing in their saddles. Most had lost their lances already, but they had sabres, and some had handguns.

  Demilancers…

  Karl-Azytzeen howled as he followed Uldin’s charge into them. Warband and horse troop met head on, at full tilt, lashing past one another. Passing cuts from pallasz and war-axes struck demilancers off their geldings. Sabres and banging wheel-locks tumbled Kurgan riders out of their saddles.

  Karl lost his shield to a pistol shot, and then swiped sideways with Efgul’s sword, ripping a single, grievous wound through the neck of a lancer’s troop horse and then through the ribcage of the lancer himself. Then he was fore-on to a demilancer who was intercepting him with sabre raised across the face at the charge position. Karl struck the blade aside, and they turned about each other, yanking back the heads of their steeds for another exchange. The sabre thrust at Karl, and he turned it aside again. Then he swung his steel down through the man’s pauldron, shoulder and deep into his trunk. The demilancer convulsed, wailing, his blood spraying into the hard rain. Karl dragged his blade out, and the lancer was gone down into the waterlogged mud.

  Karl glared around to engage again, horses and men crashed past him in all directions. There was a demilancer right upon him, coming from the hindquarters. This lancer had a wheel-lock raised stiffly in his left hand.

  Karl saw the dog spark and the muzzle flash with fire and white smoke.

  Then the shot split his head into pieces.

  ZAMAK SPAYENYA

  I

  In hindsight, perhaps it had not been the wisest thing to do.

  After a day’s straight gallop across the trackless steppe, Gerlach began to feel uneasy. There was nothing and no one out there. His two long rides with the rota, especially the trek to Leblya, had falsely inflated his confidence that he could cope out on the steppe and deal with its harsh extremes and painful solitude. He hadn’t realised how much he had looked to the lancers for their support. And for their expertise.

  He was, by the motion of the sun at least, heading due south. But after an hour or two it occurred to him that he could only presume south was the way to go. He had no specific knowledge of Leblya’s relative location. Riding south might take him back to the Empire, but it could just as well carry him to the wilds of the Worlds Edge Mountains. He had no map, and no honed lore of the oblast. His course might run for days, for weeks, into nothing, unwittingly bypassing stanitsas just over the horizon that the lancers would have known to go to.

  His hope had been to get a good start on the rota, and maybe outrun them for two or three days. Then, when they caught up with him, he would convince them to keep going with him into the south. If they didn’t kill him, that is.

  But there was no sign of riders behind him all the first day, and none on the second either.

  The banner became too heavy to hold, and he was forced to ride with it cradled across his knees and saddlebow. He began to feel like a shameless thief, and dearly regretted taking it. Maybe if he had just ridden off, they would have followed him anyway. They seemed to care about his welfare. That made his crime seem worse. They had been good to him – staunch allies and generous comrades – and he had robbed them of their most precious artifact.

  More than once he thought of turning back. He also considered leaving the rota somewhere for them to find. Scorching sunlit days turned to bitter oblast nights. The sun glared at him contemptuously, and the stars, in their multitude, mocked him.

  The fourth day came and went, then the fifth. He had never been out of sight of other humans for so long. His only company was the passing clouds, but they seemed resentful, and chose not to show him any pictures he could read.

  On the sixth morning, aching and anxious, he halted Saksen and stood for a long while, watching the northern horizon for signs of movement. Surely they would be coming close by now. He kept expecting to see them rise into view: heads, shoulders, horses, shimmering in the heat haze. Several times he thought he’d seen them, but it was just the light and space playing tricks on his tired mind.

  He had brought some food and water, but nothing like enough for a trek of this magnitude. Vitali – and by Sigmar, he would have been overjoyed to see that smiling warrior again! – had showed him how to dig for water, and collect dew overnight in his armour plate and helm, but it was a meagre resource, and most of it went to his gelding. Saksen was strong, but he was also used to decent, regular fodder. He was a southerner, just like Gerlach, and was not built for these conditions. The troop horse had nothing of the stamina and resilience displayed by the robust steppe ponies the lancers rode. They seemed to fare without ready water, and greedily foraged on the tough grasses when rested at camp. Saksen appeared to find the grass indigestible. But when he was with the ponies, he had seemed content to follow their lead and graze. Gerlach could not make him eat the scrub, though he tried. Saksen was ailing.

  Gerlach was ailing too. Thirst and hunger oppressed him physically, and he began to feel tormented by guilt and loneliness. He had ridden out of Leblya, intent on his scheme to draw the rota back to the war. That seemed inconsequential now. The entire fate of the Empire no longer mattered to him; he wondered why he had ever cared. Why had he been so reckless to involve himself in that faraway fight? Hadn’t he realised where he was and how little he mattered?

  In the late afternoon of the sixth day – maybe seventh, for he was no longer absolutely sure – he saw something in the grass ahead of him. It was nothing much, but in a place as blank and featureless, any deviation from the norm stood out.

  They were bones. An untidy heap of scattered bones, old and stained pale yellow by the ministry of the wind and sun. For a while he stared at the remains, and eventually decided they belonged to a horse and a man. They had fallen here together, decayed and dried, until at last their loose bones had tumbled apart like pieces of a puzzle. How long had they been here? Years, certainly. Maybe decades, or even longer. Perhaps he was the first person to set eyes on them since the hour of their death.

  They weren’t the bones of a traveller, lost and killed by the brutal steppe, he decided. They were the bones of a rider who had chosen to gallop away from his life into the embrace of fate. Or the bones of a warrior who had been blessed with a steppe funeral.

  As he rode away from them, a sick thought invaded his mind. Was it Sorca? Or Kvetlai? Or Ptor, or Chagin? How fast did the flies and ants and buzzards of the oblast strip a body? Were those bones merely days old?

  And how long before he and Saksen formed a similar heap in another lonely spot?

  No one had warned him about the sounds of the steppe. Riding with the men of the rota, he had not noticed them. But alone now, strange noises came to him above the thump of Saksen’s hooves, the steady tinkling of the bit and harness, and the gentle rattle of his armour.

  The open air uttered odd moans and long, distant wails that he presumed were the wind. Something invisible made strange clicks as loud as wheel-locks being wound. A fretful buzzing sound came and went, growing louder and louder until he drew up to listen for it only to find that it had disappeared. There was an occasional sound of hooves that never came closer and the inexplicable rush of racing water.

  At dusk each day, dull booms pealed across the steppe. He stopped and listened for them, trying to discern their source. There were no storm clouds so he knew it wasn’t thunder. It sounded like a great drum, struck once every few minutes. He would wait and listen until his patience lapsed and then, as soon as he started off again, another boom would come.

  There were sounds at night too: sharper wails, and strange hollow growls that seemed to circle about him in the dark. Sometimes he heard voices, so distinct that he called out to them. The moment he spoke, the voices died away. And sometimes, there was laughter.

  But the daylight sounds were the worst. At night, he could imagine, with a creeping dread, that there were things in the blackness around him. But in the light, he could see for certain there were not.

  Once, under the midday heat, he caught the sound of a metal hinge grinding as it swung to and fro. There was a beat behind it, like the repeating thunk of a hammer on a metal sheet.

  He drew Saksen up, and the sound continued. It was coming from close by, just to his right. Saksen’s ears flicked back and forth. The gelding heard it too.

  Gerlach dismounted, and walked through the grass, tracking the noise. He had drawn his loaded handgun and was clutching it in his hand. With the wood and iron piece in his hand, he was at least guarded against evil spirits. The sound grew louder and more insistent. It seemed to emanate from a rock the size of a man’s head that lay in the dust amongst other quartzy fragments.

  He approached it, and gingerly bent down beside the rock. The shrieking hinge and hammer were so loud now, he felt like he was in a smithy. He circled the rock and the source of the sound remained stationary. Under the stone.

  Gerlach reached down and lifted the rock up.

  The hinge and the hammer stopped. A terrible, shrill whistling erupted out of the depression where the rock had sat. It sang up into the air and made him fall down in shock. The noise made Saksen start.

  Then it stopped, and unnerving silence reasserted itself.

  Gerlach threw the rock aside. He was shaking. When he looked up, Saksen, crazed and scared, was galloping away into the grass.

  II

  He ran after his horse, calling its name as loudly as his parched throat could manage. Then he stopped and doubled back to retrieve the rota banner, which had fallen onto the ground when Saksen bolted. Dragging it with him, like a deranged fool, he ran after the swiftly disappearing gelding.

  ‘Saksen! Saksen! In the name of Sigmar! Byeli-Saksen!’

  The horse was gone. The buzzing returned.

  Behind it, like wind through leaves, there was distant laughter.

  III

  He trudged for a long period of immeasurable time, limping against the shaft of the heavy banner. When the buzzing returned, harsh and rasping in his ears, he turned in a circle and yelled a challenge aloud.

  ‘What are you? Where are you?’

  The buzzing seemed to swoop at him, and he cried out in alarm and fired his pistol.

  Silence. The white smoke of his shot billowed up into a little cloud that drifted away into the sunny air.

  For a moment, the tiny cloud looked like a white horse at full gallop. Then it fumed away and dissolved into the steppe breeze.

  IV

  Dusk fell. The sky turned a dense, Imperial blue, like the air before a storm, and the grasslands went white. The wide landscape was luminous, and the heavens a dead, lightless gloom.

  Gerlach saw a stark, white speck, motionless, a league ahead of him.

  He stumbled on, hurrying towards it.

  Saksen stood stock still, his reins trailing, his head up. His flanks were caked in dry salt. The gelding was looking south.

  As Gerlach approached, Saksen turned his noble head once to look at his master, then resumed his vigil.

  Gerlach cast down the banner and the spent pistol, and edged towards his horse, cooing softly and holding out his hands. He ripped up a handful of steppe grass, the greenest he could find, and offered it out.

  ‘Byeli… Byeli… Byeli-Saksen. Steady now. Steady now, old friend….’

  Saksen allowed him to get close, and even sniffed the grass, though he would not take it. Gerlach stroked and patted Saksen’s neck and took hold of the loose reins.

  ‘Byeli… Byeli-Saksen.’

  Gerlach led Saksen back and collected the banner and the pistol. Saksen tugged impatiently, wanting to turn south again.

  Gerlach mounted up. Once he had the advantage of saddle-height, he saw what lay in the distance.

  A puff of dust, kicked up by horsemen.

  Galvanised, Gerlach found his stirrups and kicked his heels.

  ‘Yatsha!’

  V

  At first it seemed as if there were a half dozen riders, chasing north-east in the grey, fading light. But as he closed, Gerlach realised they were in fact one and five. One man was riding hard, pursued by five others.

  Gerlach realised he could not hope to catch them. They were too far away, and running fast.

  He reined up and raised the banner, planting its tip in the soil beside Saksen.

  The chased rider saw it, and turned in towards Gerlach.

  Gerlach primed his pistol, and slipped it into its case. Then he drew his sabre.

  The lone rider was approaching, thrashing up a wake of dust with his furious gallop. A steppe horse. A rider in rough furs and leathers.

  It was Kvetlai. And behind him came five Kul horsemen.

  As soon as he recognised Kvetlai, Gerlach beckoned to him furiously. He didn’t like the odds, but he was committed now. Five to one, or five to two if Kvetlai was able. Gerlach vowed he would make a good account of himself.

  The riders came on.

  As soon as he was close enough to identify Gerlach, Kvetlai started to yell, ‘Vebla! Vebla! Yha!’

  Gerlach smiled grimly. He waved Kvetlai on past him, and raised the wheel-lock, braced in both hands. He used his knees to keep Saksen at a steady halt.

  Kvetlai swept past him, churning up a trail of dust and grit. The Kul horsemen were heartbeats away. Three had drawn swords, one an axe and a small shield. The closest, mailed in a low, frog-brow sallet, swung a flail.

  Gerlach took aim. He was the target now. The Kul were riding him down and Kvetlai had disappeared somewhere behind him.

  Four lengths away, Gerlach fired. His shot took the Kul with the flail in the neck and smashed him out of his saddle. His body slammed into the dust and rolled over and over as his empty horse rushed past Gerlach.

  There was no time to reload. Gerlach cased his pistol and took up his sabre. He kicked Saksen forward and raised his blade crosswise to his face in the charge position. He galloped to greet the nearest Kul.

  The horseman had a sword, and was swinging it in wild loops as he came on. Gerlach spurred Saksen abruptly to the man’s off-side at the last moment, and thrust in across the saddle bow as they passed. The sabre came away bloody and the Kul screamed and fell forward over his mare’s neck, dropping his blade.

  The next two were on him, swordsman to the left and axe man to the right. Gerlach drove between them, and avoided both cutting slashes. Head low, Gerlach passed them, and met the tail-ender. Their swords struck and sent brief sparks up into the dark blue sky.

  They both turned to re-engage.

  The other two were turning as well, whooping and howling.

  Gerlach went at the tail-ender and traded sword blows again. They had lost all momentum, and were saddle to saddle, hacking and blocking. The other two Kul were closing.

  Gerlach split the air with his sabre, trying to drive off the tail-ender’s blade. He was protecting both himself and Saksen, for the barbarian saw both as viable targets.