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Duty and Honour - Chris Wraight

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DUTY AND HONOUR

Chris Wraight

Kurt Helborg, Reiksmarshal, master of the Emperor’s armies, wrinkled his nose, drawing briny air into his nostrils, barely hearing the cacophony of shouts, thuds and screams that rose up in a massed brawl of noise from a few hundred yards away. As his face moved, his waxed moustache flexed.

He watched his men die with the blank, severe expression he’d learned to adopt over the course of his long career. His horse twitched beneath him and he adjusted position in the saddle. Beside him, Skarr’s Reiksguard squadron waited patiently for their orders.

They would have to keep waiting. All the while, Helborg watched, observed, weighed, judged.

His men fought before him across an empty, forgotten land. Ruined towers broke the horizon, tall and eldritch but blackened by ancient fires. A pearl-grey sky descended to meet the grimy earth, pregnant with unshed rain and darkening quickly towards the dusk. Megaliths stood eerily among rustling tussocks, crusted with lichen and as old as the bones of the world. They loomed mournfully above a formless terrain, mile upon mile of wide, marshy wasteland, barred with glistening channels of slow-moving water.

Below Helborg’s position, down a long shallow incline and out on to the wide marram grass plains, two armies of several thousand – one Imperial, one Bretonnian – were entangled in bloody combat. It was a messy engagement, a straggling scrum of thousands of grappling infantry troops, extended far in either direction under the fading light.

Over it all the ravens hung, wheeling and mobbing in the frigid sky. They stared down over a nothing-place, a buffer between realms. When the gods had finished creating the world they had left many such places behind them – unfinished stretches of void, home only to beasts, squalls, and the ghosts of elder races.

To fight over it was beneath him. The dispute with the viscount was a minor one, a sordid exchange of border raids and burned fortresses, petulant threats of war and pillage. Resolving the matter was imperative – the pride of the Empire was at stake – but there was no glory in it, no glory at all.

Helborg watched his men die for a little longer, his expression unchanging.

‘We can’t win this,’ he said at last.

He beckoned, and a squire standing by his horse handed him an open-faced, hawk-winged helmet. Helborg hoisted it over his head and fixed it in place, drawing the straps tight around his clean-shaven chin.

‘But we can blood them.’

Skarr, happy to see some signs of movement, made a gesture to the squadron of mounted Reiksguard waiting patiently alongside him. It was a simple thing – a tilting of his gauntlet, a touching of fingers – but the effect was immediate. More squires rushed forward with lances, all of which were taken up.

‘Who would choose to own this?’ demanded Helborg acidly, seizing his lance and holding it one-handed, tip extended vertically. ‘Who would fight for it?’

‘They seem to like it,’ said Skarr, nodding into the distance.

Helborg followed his gaze.

‘Aye,’ he said, narrowing his eyes. ‘They must do.’

Out in the dusky haze, beyond the struggling lines of infantry, waited the enemy’s heavy cavalry. Just as the Reiksguard had, they stood out the day’s exchanges, letting the foot soldiers test themselves against one another in a cagey series of half-committed advances. Only now, as the light of the sun dipped towards the west and the blood began to clot in the sand, were they making ready for the charge.

Helborg could make out the pennants of the d’Alembençons hanging limp in the static air. He saw the glimmer of bull’s head and fleur de lys devices, set in sable on fields of argent. He saw peasantry scurry around their mounted masters like rats at the foot of old monuments.

He didn’t know which one of the dozens of plate-armoured giants was the viscount. The knights all looked much the same to him – heavily armed, gilded, decked out in layers of steel that an Empire warhorse would have struggled to carry, let alone charge with.

Formidable. Not for nothing did men across the Old World fear the onslaught of the knights of Bretonnia.

Helborg spat on the ground and tightened his grip on his lance.

‘Ready, preceptor?’ he asked calmly, as if he were inviting one of his many consorts out for a stroll along the banks of the Reik by starlight.

‘Very much so,’ said Skarr, snapping the visor of his helm into place.

‘Then give the order, if you please.’

Skarr rose up in the saddle.

‘Reiksguard, on my command!’ he roared.

The line of knights instantly tensed, adjusting the grip on their long lances. They looked lean, sharp and hungry, like wolves coming down from the treeline in winter. Hooves stamped, horses snorted impatiently, and the red and white banner of the Empire’s elite swung heavily up into place.

Helborg felt a sudden burst of adrenaline, just as he always did before action. He felt his thigh muscles tense. His gauntlets curled around the reins.

Then Skarr roared out again, his rasping voice ringing out despite the jaw of his helm muffling it.

‘Charge!’

Hooves kicked out in a flurry of mud, sending the squires scattering back out of the way. With a steady, accelerating drum and clatter, the line of Reiksguard swept down the incline and broke into the charge. Helborg drove them hard, watching the enemy ranks draw closer with every buck and stretch of his steed’s churning limbs. The grey air whistled past him, sending his cloak streaming out behind. As he had done a hundred times before, he crouched in the saddle, feeling the dead weight of his lance come to bear as the metal tip lowered to its killing angle.

Mercy of Sigmar, but he loved this.

It never got wearisome; it never got stale. He saw the faces of the Bretonnian peasants sweep into focus, blotched with pox and white with fear.

Too ugly to mourn.

He grinned, and picked out his first victim.

You first.

Captain Axel von Bachmeier hauled himself back up the slope, feeling his boots sink into the mud. The ground beneath him was as shifting as the weather, home to a thousand tiny runnels of brackish water. It was a poor place to fight in – the men got bogged down, manoeuvring was difficult, bringing detachments into play was cumbersome.

His retinue laboured alongside him, happy enough to get out of combat for just a few moments. The going had been heavy and arduous, and there was little glory in such work even with the presence of the Reiksmarshal on the field to inspire them.

Bachmeier’s breathing became thick. He stopped trudging and turned around, trying to get some sense of the battle’s shape. From his vantage, less than a hundred yards back from the heaviest fighting, he could see all across the battlefield. What he saw didn’t improve his spirits.

Ten thousand men were locked together, stretched out in two long, broken formations. The Empire troops fought in their squares, maintaining formation, holding ground with typical tenacity. The Bretonnians were less disciplined but there were more of them.

Bachmeier didn’t think much of the quality of the enemy foot soldiers. The front-rank fighters were little more than villagers, sent into combat bearing farm implements and kitchen knives. Those in the second wave were tougher, but still no match for a well-trained pikeman or halberdier.

For all those mismatches, the engagement was grinding slowly to a stalemate. Daylight was failing fast, running quickly from a pale to a dark grey – it was only a matter of time before the signals for withdrawal would ring out.

The Bretonnians hadn’t committed their full strength yet. Their plate-armoured knights waited out on the flanks, ready to sweep along the full width of the battlefield when required. They were the reason Helborg hadn’t been able to deploy his artillery, probably the only thing on the field capable of making a decisive breakthrough. The Reiksmarshal knew perfectly well how devastating Bretonnian cavalry was on the charge – in such empty terrain, he had no chance of deploying guns without risk of them being destroyed before they were ready.

So there it was. The guns would not be deployed for fear of the knights, and the knights would not engage in case the guns deployed while they were wrapped up in fighting. Stalemate.

Only as the sunlight dribbled away toward the tower-studded western horizon were the cavalry units riding out at last – a show of strength, a final attempt to break the deadlock before nightfall forced an end to the day’s curtailed brutality.

Bachmeier, with his three decades of service and experience, knew the attempt would fail. Too many infantry formations were still intact and the essential core of each army was solid. The charges would be a chance for the horsemen to get their swords bloody, but that was all.

He leaned on his sword, letting the tip of it puncture the earth at his feet. The spectacle would give him something to watch before duty called him away again.

The Reiksguard moved first, far out along the rear-west flank of the battlefield. They charged down a long, shallow slope, churning up the sodden earth as they came. Their banner streamed out as they rumbled into contact. Helborg was at the forefront, a yard ahead of his nearest supporting warrior and with his cloak snapping and whipping about his broad shoulders.

The knights’ armour was pristine in the dull light, and the gaudy feathers atop their helms caught the last of the sun’s rays. They wheeled around a beleaguered unit of Empire halberdiers, riding hard and fast, before careering straight into a thick knot of Bretonnian peasant soldiers beyond.

The infantry stood no chance. Bachmeier watched them scatter, breaking from the front and fleeing headlong for the rear of their army’s formation. The Reiksguard rode among them at will, first using their long lances, then switching to broadswords as the long shafts splintered.

Bachmeier turned away from the carnage, sweeping his gaze across the enemy lines towards the opposite, eastern flank. The Bretonnians had already responded. Their knights were more heavily armoured and their steeds were huge, shaggy-fetlocked beasts that looked more like carthorses than destriers. They took longer to build up speed, but when they did the momentum was huge. Bachmeier could feel the heavy beat of their hooves thrum along the earth as they galloped down the opposing slope towards a long front of Empire pikemen. Ramshackle masses of Bretonnian peasantry before them scurried to get out of the way. Some of them didn’t make it in time, and were ridden down by the remorseless wall of steel and muscle bearing down the incline.

Bachmeier felt his heart stir. He knew he was supposed to loathe them – they were, after all, the enemy – but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Their armour was spectacularly ornate, their colours dazzling, their horsemanship superb. They rode with a pounding, full-blooded commitment that even the Reiksguard couldn’t match.

The pikemen responded well. They dug their long pikes into the yielding earth and a forest of staves sprung up, angled to punch into the warhorses’ chests or take the riders out of the saddle. They braced themselves, gripping the shafts of their pikes and planting their boots into the earth.

Bachmeier watched, transfixed.

Hold fast, lads, he breathed to himself.

The knights hit the line, and it dissolved into a storm of screams, snaps, thuds and whinnies. The first row of pikes did some damage, unhorsing knights and sending their steeds crashing back to earth. Behind them, though, the force of the charge was unhindered. Knights broke through the reeling resistance like a storm-tide sweeping aside crumbling sea walls, hammering down the fragile resistance and going after the survivors.

Bachmeier saw the Empire men fall back, reeling from the impact of the charge. They didn’t run witlessly – a few of them kept their cohesion, evading the worst of the charge and waiting for the horsemen to lose momentum.

With their lances broken, the knights cast them aside and reached for longswords. They swung their horses round, surging back into the Empire lines and causing more havoc. They lashed out on either side of them, crashing through the mass of broken defenders like galleons bucking through slate-grey swells.

For a moment, Bachmeier saw the potential for the two cavalry forces to come together. Just fleetingly, he wondered if he had been wrong. If the mounted Reiksguard fought their way into contact with the Bretonnian cavalry then the encounter could yet have some kind of resolution.

He pulled his sword from the ground, feeling his heart begin to pump heavily. Perhaps the action was not yet over. All around him, his retinue hoisted their weapons back into position.

Then the trumpets rang out. The cavalry – Reiksguard and Bretonnian – drew up in their saddles, pulled hard on the reins, and began to withdraw. All along the battlefront, weary troops disengaged or were dragged back from combat by their sergeants.

The light was fading fast. Bachmeier’s first judgement had been right. No result could be forced that day, and neither general wished to provoke a slaughter of valuable warriors. No commander, not even one with Helborg’s reputation for risk-taking, would countenance throwing away an army for such a miserable tract of worthless border country.

Bachmeier began to move again, heading back to where the units under his command still laboured. They’d need his guidance to achieve an orderly withdrawal, and he had no intention of letting his sections of the line break into disarray.

As he did so, he caught sight of one of the Bretonnian knights, already in the distance and riding hard back to his lines. The warrior’s armour glinted warmly in the last of the sun, as if lined with silver. His charger, its caparisons still vivid despite the splatters of grime, powered up the slope with a ponderous, weighty grace. Before quitting the field, the knight brandished his sword with a final flourish – a gesture of arrogance, of self-assurance, of superiority.

Magnificent, thought Bachmeier.

The fire crackled in its pit, sending oily smoke snaking around the tent’s central pole and out through vents in the canvas above. From outside, the noises of the camp settling down for the night were clearly audible: cooking pots being swilled out, soldiers singing, the rattle and chink of dice being thrown against pewter.

Within, the mood was colder. Helborg sat in a wooden chair near the fire, slumped like a warrior chief of old. He’d taken his helm off but otherwise wore his full plate armour. His body ached from riding, but at least the exercise had driven some of the frustration out of him.

‘We cannot do this again,’ he said, staring into the fire as he spoke.

His captains sat in a circle before him, each of them similarly attired. Most had dents in their armour or bloodstains on their jerkins. One man had a stained bandage across one eye and others displayed hastily stitched wounds across their exposed flesh.

Skarr nodded, gnawing at a stringy piece of chicken.

‘We could take them,’ he said. ‘We’d need to move fast – get in among the knights before they were ready, bring the guns up.’

Helborg sympathised. He’d toyed with ordering the same thing after the midday skirmishes. It had been too risky then, and it would be again. Things were evenly balanced, and losing the Reiksguard on a reckless charge against equally skilled cavalry, all for the sake of a few blackpowder pieces, would be a disaster. If the enemy had been different – if it had been the Great Enemy hammering at the gates of Nuln or the hated greenskins threatening to overrun Averland – then he might have taken the risk. As it was, for a piece of land worth nothing and for the sake of men he’d once fought beside as allies, the waste was unconscionable.

‘We can’t break them quick enough,’ said one of his captains.

Helborg flicked his gaze over to the man who’d spoken – a minor infantry commander. For a moment, he struggled to remember the man’s name.

Bachmeier. That was the one.

‘What did you say?’ asked Helborg, surprised that he’d spoken out.

‘I don’t think, sir, that we can break them quick enough,’ said Bachmeier. ‘They know what we need to do to beat them.’

Helborg looked at the man carefully. He knew the type – solid enough, probably passed over for promotion, not the bravest or the most diligent, possibly nearing the end of his career. No doubt that was why he dared to speak so freely.

‘And what would your counsel be then, captain?’ asked Helborg, humouring him.

Bachmeier shrugged.

‘I have none,’ he said. ‘This terrain gives us nothing. We could dance around the edges of a fight, hoping that they lose their minds and break formation, or we could meet them head on, nothing held back, no sweet manoeuvres. We can win that way, but it’ll cost us.’

Helborg nodded, agreeing with the man’s assessment even as he found it depressing. He had come to the same conclusion two days previously; perhaps it had been foolish to think that any of his officers was likely to find a better way to win.

He sat back in his seat and placed his fingers before him in a loose pyramid. He’d hoped that a quick, clean punitive raid into the Bretonnian marches in response to repeated skirmishing along the Empire borders east of Marienburg would have been an end to the matter. He’d not wanted to get drawn into a protracted campaign while far more serious threats waited along the Empire’s northern borders, but that was precisely what was now at risk. Retreat would be a serious embarrassment and would weaken the hand of the border commanders; staying put risked sucking precious resources into a petty and pointless war.

The whole thing had begun to make his head ache.

‘Very well,’ he said at last, snapping his fingers closed. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’

Before he could go further, the entrance flaps to the tent were pulled aside. A grey-faced sentry entered, bowed, and stood awkwardly before the council.

‘Your pardon, lord,’ he said, looking at Helborg nervously. ‘I did not think this could wait.’

Helborg looked at him sharply.

‘What couldn’t?’ he asked.

‘I couldn’t,’ came a third voice.

Its owner stepped out of the sentry’s shadow. He was tall, fair-skinned and with a sharply cut thatch of blond hair. He wore fine robes cut in the archaic Couronne style, lined with gold thread and held at the waist by a thin belt of leather knots. His features were clean, his manner assured and his bearing formal.

He bowed low, finishing the gesture with a flourish of his slender hand.

‘Gascard d’Alembençon, lord,’ he announced. ‘The viscount, may the Lady preserve him, sends me as embassy, with all rights of safe passage under the conventions of ordered nations.’

Helborg’s brow furrowed. The man’s Reikspiel was fluent but his manner was off-putting. He knew from experience that noble-born Bretonnians were fearsome warriors – as brave as any he’d known and often more skilful than their Imperial counterparts – but that didn’t stop them coming over as… fey.

‘Your brother is a bandit,’ said Helborg. ‘His men have raided our settlements, causing loss of both life and property. I’ve come to punish him, and that’s an end to it – there’s nothing to discuss.’

Gascard smiled coolly.

‘Then we clearly have different interpretations of what has been happening here, my lord,’ he said. ‘The viscount protects his own. If there has been raiding, then it has come from one side of the border only.’

Helborg rolled his eyes, in no mood to debate the history of the whole miserable affair again.

‘You wish to make restitution?’ he asked. ‘That can be arranged.’

The ambassador lost his smile.

‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘The viscount has a proposal. If you will hear it, then I will convey your answer.’

Helborg observed the man carefully. Such gestures were typical of the Bretonnian high classes. They revelled in the theatrical display, the courtly dance of promise and counter-promise. The code they lived by had long since died out in the Empire, a code that placed personal conduct above political consideration and made everything of a man’s word, his bloodline and his honour.

Helborg had always found it a tedious philosophy. The world was a harsh place, beset by beasts of darkness and hordes of ruin; there was scarce enough room in it for survival, let alone politesse.

‘Speak, then,’ said Helborg, jadedly.

‘The viscount has no wish to see noble men of the Empire lose their lives,’ said Gascard. ‘He supposes that you, being a just lord in your part, have no wish to see the flower of the Marches wasted. We both know the truth. Our armies are matched – even the victor cannot leave the field without grievous loss. So the viscount proposes a solution. He offers you the honour of single combat. On foot, longswords, to the death. He who stands at the end shall be declared victorious. The opposing army shall withdraw, ceding right of lawful conquest over all lands under dispute.’

As soon as the ambassador mentioned the words ‘single combat’, Helborg felt his heart respond. In an instant, the dreary prospect of days of brutal, undistinguished fighting through the marshy hinterlands of a backwards realm was replaced with the chance of a clean, dignified result.

Gascard waited. The assembled captains said nothing. Even the noises outside the tent were stilled – the men had seen the ambassador enter, and they waited to see him leave.

Helborg found himself tempted, sorely tempted. He’d seen the skill at arms of the viscount’s men and the duellist within him relished the chance to test his swordsmanship against their master. Absently, his fingers strayed to the hilt of his runefang, resting lightly on the jewelled pommel.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Wait outside while I confer. You shall have your answer shortly.’

Gascard bowed, and withdrew. As soon as he was gone, Helborg turned to Skarr.

‘Can they be trusted?’ he asked. ‘Will they honour the terms?’

Skarr nodded.

‘Honour is everything to them. If the viscount swears an oath, he’ll die to uphold it.’

Helborg smiled. A sudden eagerness ran through his tired muscles. He sat up in his chair, flexing his arms.

‘So I have always heard,’ he said. ‘Then I am minded to do it. It’s been too long since I took on a worthy opponent. Schwarzhelm has a certain dogged ability, of course, but no finesse. This will be different.’

He swept his gaze across the assorted captains, daring them to object. He felt reckless, and knew it was a failing, but he also knew what talent he possessed and what record he had.

‘Cheer up, my lords,’ said Helborg, grinning wolfishly and gesturing for the ambassador to be summoned back in. ‘This viscount will be coughing on his own blood before noon tomorrow – and we’ll be on the march home before dusk.’

The morning brought fresh wind from the north, gusting clear of the megaliths and racing across the dreary plains.

Just as they had done the previous day, the two armies lined up, facing each other across a quarter of a mile of sodden, ripped-up grassland. They remained apart, two rangy formations of brawl-battered soldiers, their weapons sheathed, their banners drifting aimlessly in the swirling breeze.

Helborg moved into the open first, striding confidently from cover, resplendent in full battle regalia. His sword, the Klingerach runefang, clattered at his side as he walked. His gait was heavy under his armour and the soles of his boots sucked at the marshy soil.

He wore an open-faced helm, as he always did in single combat. He liked to look his enemy in the eyes as he killed them, enjoying the knowledge that his frost-hard expression would be the last thing they would see before being ushered into Morr’s cold embrace. He’d waxed his moustache until it was almost as stiff as the leather jerkin under his breastplate, and he’d ensured the emblem of Karl Franz was as highly polished as the Imperial dining service.

When he reached halfway, Helborg planted his feet firmly, drew his shoulders back, and waited.

A hundred yards in front of him, the Bretonnian lines parted. Between them walked a giant of a man, similarly clad in a knight’s full plate. His armour was thicker-set than Helborg’s and looked very old. A long crimson cloak hung down from his shoulders, lined with ermine and decorated with lozenges of black and gold.

He strode up to Helborg, coming to a standstill just a few paces away. Helborg scrutinised him carefully. The outline of a goblet had been graven into the knight’s breastplate, decorated with fine golden tracery and surrounded by an elaborate, oak-leafed halo. For all its age, the armour had obviously been reverently treated – delicate flutes of beaten metal winked in the morning sun, lending the curved steel an almost palpable glow. The warrior wore a close-faced helm, giving nothing of his features away.

Helborg drew his sword. It left the scabbard with a whisper, and the blade shone coldly in the pale light of morning.

‘Viscount d’Alembençon,’ said Helborg, inclining his head a fraction.

The viscount drew his own sword. As it emerged into the air, a faint golden sheen spilled from the mouth of the scabbard.

‘Reiksmarshal,’ replied d’Alembençon.

The man’s voice was unearthly, as if subtly altered by something. Even in those few syllables, the resonance was far deeper, far richer than any mortal man’s had a right to be.

Helborg’s eyes flickered across to the Bretonnian’s ornate livery. He remembered something about their legends – stories of a grail, quests and blessings of the deity they called the Lady.

For the first time, he wondered if he should have paid more attention.

‘You’re bound by your word of honour,’ said Helborg, gripping the hilt of his own blade. ‘To the death, and the army of the vanquished quits the field. You accept those terms?’

D’Alembençon nodded. Even that slight gesture was suffused with some strange, indefinable quality. It was as if the man were animated by subtle witchery, making his every movement smoother and more decisive than it should have been.

‘I do,’ said d’Alembençon, and brought his blade into guard.

For a moment longer, Helborg waited. His practised eyes scanned his opponent, looking for weak points in the armour, searching out flaws in his stance.

None were obvious.

‘Then let Sigmar be the judge of it,’ said Helborg.

‘He cannot judge anything,’ said d’Alembençon. ‘Not here.’

The two weapons moved at the same time, blurring through the air before clashing together with an echoing, biting clang. Helborg applied more force, pressing the metal home, testing out the knight’s strength.

It was formidable. D’Alembençon matched Helborg’s pressure, then added more of his own. The two warriors maintained the position for several heartbeats before finally spinning apart.

Helborg moved his blade round quickly and pressed in close again, sliding it fast and low. D’Alembençon parried, taking a step back before pulling his sword up and hammering it down two-handed. Then it was Helborg’s turn to block. He took the impact above his chest. The shock of the blow sent him into a half-stagger, which he corrected instantly. D’Alembençon pressed the advantage, recovering ground and forcing Helborg back further.

The strikes got heavier after that. The two duellists rocked back and forth, probing each other’s defences, teasing, feinting, looking for the way in. Helborg quickly assessed the calibre of his adversary: d’Alembençon knew how to hit hard, but also kept his defence intact. His long blade moved quickly and smoothly, carving through the air like a rapier.

‘Not bad,’ said Helborg, feeling sweat trickle down the inside of his helm. ‘For a master of peasants, not bad.’

D’Alembençon never said a word. The unbroken silence of his fighting quickly became eerie. Helborg found himself wondering if some awful deception had taken place; that perhaps his foe was something more or less than human under all that glittering armour.

You will still die, he thought, handling his blade with assured deftness, stepping back out of a furious challenge before committing to one of his own. You all die, in the end.

Throughout all of that, Helborg was only vaguely aware of the presence of the two armies standing around them. He got a blurred impression of them as his body twisted: rows of men, static and impotent, all held rapt by the contest before them, watching for the result that would determine their next move.

D’Alembençon’s technique was formal, as Helborg would have expected of a Bretonnian. Helborg tried to undermine that with improvisation – darting stabs launched from nowhere, sudden reversals, sham errors.

Nothing succeeded. Helborg heard his own breathing grow ragged. Handling a longsword in full plate armour was exhausting, and he felt the first stirrings of muscle pain in his arms.

‘So you know how to use a sword,’ he rasped, turning out of a challenge before planting his trailing foot and pushing back into the attack.

‘I do,’ said d’Alembençon, speaking at last. His voice was the same as it had been before – calm, resonant, otherwordly.

Helborg stepped up the ferocity of his attacks, discarding finesse for brute force. The blades clashed again, sending showers of sparks spiralling out into the frigid air, making the shafts shiver. He stayed on the front foot, whirling the steel edge ever faster, bringing it down in tight, whistling arcs.

Nothing had any impact. The viscount kept on fighting, doggedly resisting every attempt to knock him out of his stride. As Helborg’s attacks got nowhere, d’Alembençon launched into some of his own, driving forward, keeping up the pressure, restricting the scope for movement and withdrawal.

Helborg felt his armour weighing him down, slowing his movements by precious fractions. He pulled back, step by step, blunting the force of the incoming strikes, searching for a way to turn the tide of precise, controlled aggression.

When the first wound came he barely felt it. The attack slipped under his guard, striking him above the waist. Helborg snatched himself away, immediately correcting his stance, before realising he’d been hit expertly – the shell of his armour had been driven in, pinching the flesh and grinding up against his ribcage.

He limped away, parrying the flurry of blows that followed with difficulty.

Now this gets interesting, he thought.

Ignoring the pain, he pressed home the attack. Head down, legs bent, Helborg swung the runefang hard. For just a moment, driven by little more than cussedness, he gained the ascendancy. He thrust his blade with pace and flair, loading power into every blow. He felt the familiar rush of superiority; the knowledge he was seizing mastery of his opponent. D’Alembençon stumbled before the frenzied attack, nearly losing his footing, and Helborg pounced.

Just as before, he never saw the wound coming. One moment, he was racing to finish the task, the next he was staggering away, frantically defending himself against a hail of withering strokes.

It had been a feint, a beautiful, subtle feint of the highest order. Had he seen it done on the parade grounds of the Imperial Palace, Helborg would have smiled knowingly and with pleasure. As it was, he barely prevented the manoeuvre from costing him his life.

He retreated, feeling the pain from newly broken ribs throb through his torso. His breastplate had been cracked, making it hard to breathe. For a few more moments he held off the assault, but then the inevitable came. More thrusts hit their target. He missed his footing, feeling the earth rush up to meet him, and fell heavily on to his back.

As he scrambled to lift the Klingerach into guard, d’Alembençon loomed over him and pressed the point of his sword to his neck.

‘So now you die, Reiksmarshal,’ said the viscount, sounding as impassive and ethereal as ever. ‘You should not have fought me.’

Helborg stared up at him. He felt neither fear nor anger, only astonishment; astonishment that someone had beaten him at last.

‘What… are you?’ he asked.

D’Alembençon reached up to his helm, and pulled it free.

The man’s face was human enough – lean, taut features, a ruddy complexion, sea-green eyes, thick hair the colour of sand. He looked the very image of a Bretonnian lord, save for one thing.

Everything shone. His skin shimmered like ivory in moonlight. The effect was subtle, just on the edge of perception, but impossible to ignore. When he spoke, opalescent light spilled from between his lips.

‘I am blessed by the Lady, Reiksmarshal,’ he said. ‘I have supped from the Grail and taken on its power. Did you not recognise my devices?’

Helborg’s eyes slipped down to the image of the goblet on the viscount’s armour.

‘A warning,’ he muttered. ‘How admirable.’

D’Alembençon drew the tip of his sword up, ready to plunge it into Helborg’s exposed throat.

‘I regret killing you,’ he said mournfully. ‘You fought–’

His words were obscured by the sudden crack and boom of artillery fire ringing out across the empty plain. From the north, out on the far left flank of the Bretonnian lines, plumes of rolling smoke began to boil up into the sky. A whole barrage thundered out, sending mortar shells whistling into the close-packed ranks of infantry.

The effect was immediate – peasant soldiers broke into a stampede, clambering over one another to escape the bombardment. Helborg heard the frantic neighing of horses, followed by the horrific screams of men being ridden down.

D’Alembençon’s head snapped round, his mouth open. His sword wavered, just for a moment.

‘How is this–?’ he started, his voice weak with disbelief.

Helborg knew he only had seconds to act. With an almighty heave, he smashed the viscount’s sword aside and hauled himself back to his feet. The runefang felt light in his hands, as if the spirit of the weapon knew what deceit had been practised and approved of it.

Helborg swung two heavy blows into the knight’s torso, sending him staggering back. D’Alembençon’s poise had been completely undone. He parried hurriedly, but his blade was smashed out of his hands. It flew away, end over end, before landing in the mud and lodging fast. Before d’Alembençon could go after it, Helborg jabbed his sword up, pinning the viscount by the neck.

The roles were reversed. As the two men stood facing one another, the roar of more artillery filled the skies. Helborg heard the sound of his own men breaking into the charge, ready to exploit the disarray in the Bretonnians and turn confusion into slaughter.

‘Faithless!’ hissed d’Alembençon, his face scarlet with rage and disbelief.

Helborg pressed the edge of the runefang’s blade into the viscount’s neck, parting the flesh.

‘You don’t have to die,’ he said. ‘Call the surrender, and lives will be spared.’

For a moment, d’Alembençon hesitated. The noise of his men dying punctuated the ongoing rumble of the guns going off. He looked agonised, rocked to his core by the deception.

It was then that Helborg knew Skarr had been right. The Bretonnians had planned to keep their word. The notion that anyone might behave differently hadn’t occurred to them. The idea that Helborg might use the distraction of the duel to bring his artillery into position and shatter the balance of power hadn’t occurred to them. The full measure of Helborg’s determination, his obsession, his utterly unswerving devotion to the prestige of the Empire – none of it had occurred to them.

D’Alembençon moved. He lunged for his sword.

Helborg had known that he would. He thrust out with the runefang, aiming the blade perfectly. The ancient sword severed d’Alembençon’s head and the man’s decapitated corpse thumped to the ground, just inches from where his own weapon had lodged.

Helborg looked down at him, breathing heavily.

Even in death, the man’s profile was magnificent. His armour was far finer than any he’d seen in the Empire; beside it, his own felt gaudy and overblown. The strange moonlit lustre lingered for a while on his skin, glimmering like silver fire, before finally flickering out.

Helborg bowed his head. He felt drained. His whole body ached. He’d been taken to the limit.

‘Lord!’

Skarr’s voice roared out from close by. Helborg snapped out of his reverie and looked up.

Skarr’s squadron had ridden up across the no-man’s-land between the main ranks, eager to press on into the enemy.

‘I have your horse, my lord,’ said Skarr, gesturing to a riderless charger that had been led behind his own. His eyes were alive with the pleasure of the coming fight. ‘They’re falling back – we’ll tear them apart!’

Helborg grabbed the horse’s saddle and dragged himself up into it. He kept the runefang in hand, blood darkening the metal. Once mounted, he could see the truth of the preceptor’s words: the Bretonnians were retreating across the whole length of the field. The artillery brought up stealthily along their left flank had caused havoc, breaking their unity and causing widespread panic. All around him, Empire troops were advancing in formation, moving in for the kill with commendable discipline.

Helborg was about to kick his horse into a canter when he caught sight of the infantry captain who’d spoken out at the council. Bachmeier was marching at the head of a unit of pikemen. Unlike Skarr, he looked far from eager about the killing to come.

‘So what say you now, captain?’ shouted Helborg. ‘You still believe we won’t break them?’

Bachmeier looked up at him. The expression on his lined face was ambiguous. Helborg thought he caught something like disgust written there.

‘Not by honourable means,’ Bachmeier said.

Helborg kicked his horse over towards him, riding so close that he nearly forced the man to slip backward into the mud.

‘Honour’s for pig-herders and virgins,’ Helborg snarled, fixing Bachmeier with a stony gaze. ‘This is war.’

Bachmeier returned the glare. For a moment, he remained defiant, as if he were tempted to protest further.

Then, something stopped him. Perhaps he finally understood the necessity of what had happened, or perhaps he simply realised how dangerous it would be to bandy words with the Reiksmarshal.

Bachmeier bowed stiffly in submission. When his head rose again, there was a measure of reluctant respect in his expression, an acknowledgement, maybe, of the choices made by those in command.

‘There is still duty, though,’ he said. ‘Mine is with my men.’

Helborg watch him trudge away, back to where his soldiers waited for him.

For a brief moment, he almost envied the man’s certainties. Perhaps, once, he too would have balked at using such tactics to destroy his enemies. If he had ever felt that way, though, the habit had been beaten out of him long ago. Now only the cold purity of success remained with him – the will to conquer, to endure, to achieve victory by whatever means proved possible.

That was the difference between men like Bachmeier and him, the reason that Helborg had risen to the pinnacle of command and Bachmeier hadn’t.

There were times when Helborg wasn’t proud of what a career of constant battle had made him into. There were times when he reflected on another life, one in which the finer instincts of mankind were preserved, not suppressed.

But such thoughts seldom detained him long. The need for violence was ever close at hand, dragging him back to the front, demanding the use of his peerless capacity to rally his men, to drive them onward, to make them lethal.

Honour was optional; duty never slept.

Helborg turned away from Bachmeier, pointing his charger back toward the enemy. What remorse he felt for d’Alembençon’s death was already draining away. In its place came resolve – the iron-hard resolve that had carried him to a hundred victories and by which the writ of the Emperor was maintained across a world of endless war.

That was what sustained him, what defined him, what made survival possible; anything else was a luxury he could never indulge.

‘For the Empire,’ Helborg whispered, lowering the runefang and preparing to charge. ‘For there is nothing else.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Scars and the Space Wolves novels Battle of the Fang and Blood of Asaheim. He has also written the Space Marine Battles novel Wrath of Iron, along with Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor and Luthor Huss in the Warhammer universe. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Previously published in Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor.

This edition published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Alexander Ovchinnikov.

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ISBN 978-1-78251-248-6

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