Sigmar's Blood by Phil Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

waved the Estalian cavalrymen over to a crested ridge. His men began unshackling the artillery piece from the last of the warhorses with quick, practiced efficiency.
    Lupio Blaze left his men and trotted over to von Korden on his massive war stallion, raising his helmet’s visor as he came close. It clicked neatly into place against a crest fashioned in the shape of a burnished metal sun, revealing a handsomely tanned face beneath. The triple plume of feathers that fanned out from the helmet was magnificent and bolt-upright despite the pattering rain. If anything, the rainwater made the knight’s burnished armour look even more lustrous than usual.
    Von Korden decided he did not like him one bit.
    ‘You are expecting trouble?’ the knight asked, his lilting accent irritating to von Korden’s ears.
    ‘Yes,’ said von Korden dismissively.
    ‘The dead, they do not sleep well here,’ said Blaze in a mournful tone. ‘It is said by many.’
    ‘Many are right. Watch the ground as well as the road.’
    The knight pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully before continuing. ‘We say “Myrmidia shine upon our blades,” to give favour.’ He smiled widely as he shaped the rays of the rising sun with his fingers. ‘She is needed here, no?’
    Von Korden snorted and made the sign of the comet against his chest instead. Myrmidia indeed . Soft southern gods, all face and no fight.
    The knight took the witch hunter’s silence as a hint and wheeled his horse around, cantering back to rejoin his men.
    ‘There are wolves,’ Blaze called over his shoulder as he left. ‘The horses feel them.’
    ‘At least the nags are useful, then,’ muttered von Korden.
    Von Korden watched the state troops taking their positions, and found himself quietly impressed. The Silver Bullets took up a staggered two-line formation on the left flank, just below the low ridge where Sootson had set up the Hammer of the Witches. Von Korden recalled the first time he saw the great cannon fired, during the burning of the twisted witch that Sootson’s fellow villagers called the Grey Hag. The witch hunter’s execution had gone badly wrong when the old woman had taken control of von Korden’s flames, rather than the other way round. Sootson, the town’s blacksmith at the time, had primed the newly-repaired cannon, shoved a bucketful of horseshoes into it, and finished the job by blasting the she-devil across the square. Quick thinking, but not quick enough to stop Gorstanford going up in flames.
    Taking the front line on the right flank were Sigmar’s Sons, moving forward in ranks four deep with the Bullets covering their advance. Lupio Blaze kept his cavalry behind the leftmost ridge, patiently waiting for the cannon fire that was their signal to charge in.
    Von Korden himself was leading from the front, as was his custom, the regiment of swordsmen a few paces behind him. The witch hunter peered through the thin mist of rain that shrouded the tomb-strewn wilderness around Konigstein Watch. The tower’s shuttered windows had been broken apart and the graves around the place gaped open to the night sky.
    ‘The spoor of necromancy,’ said von Korden to the swordsmen behind. ‘There are undead here, sure as those graves are empty.’
    Suddenly there was a dull wooden crack and a cry of alarm from up on the ridge. The hunter scanned the area, but he could see nothing moving in the mists ahead. Looking back up to the Silver Bullets, he saw the handgunners’ musician, Lutiger Swift, standing lopsided. His left leg was knee-deep in the splintered coffin exposed by his one-man mudslide, and his free hand reflexively clutched the talisman around his neck.
    ‘Bloody balls,’ exhaled Swift, his city-born Talabheim accent unnaturally loud. ‘I knew I’d end up in a casket eventually, but this is a bit sudden!’ His comrades laughed and jeered as their comrade extricated himself from the wooden ruin of the grave. ‘Sorry, gents. One of the local girls was