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“Indeed I don’t,” Wilfred replied. “This leader of theirs…. Ironsnout, you called him… perhaps he can track the relic’s magics through the Warp. That is the only reason I can fathom, for a Skaven force to move so hard and fast up from Tilea.”
“The relic, is it secretly safe?” she asked. “You have it on your person?”
“No, no, I left it in Roderick’s care. Yes, he is alive and well,” he added, when he saw her eyes light up. “He took a wound during the ship’s sinking, but nothing fatal. He and Von Kessel are moving north along with the rest of the survivors.”
Hearing Kessel’s name put a damper on her mood, Wilfred glancing down at her across the fire.
“I something the matter?” he asked her. “Does Von Kessel trouble you so?”
Damn it, he had noticed her dampened mood. She would have to engage her extreme skills of speechcraft, if she wanted to keep her secrets.
“Me-Me? No, Skaven is not troubled at all. No sirree Bob, nuh-uh, definitely no Von Kessel hate over here, this Skaven actually really likes him and wishes him a long healthy life and hopes he doesn’t get cancer or the plague or anything bad-bad.”
The old wizard watched her closely, something about his narrowing eyes making her feel like he could see deep into her soul. She knew he had strange powers over plants and animals, was he using them right now, she wondered?
“I know you’ve had your quarrels with the good captain, miss Seeker,” he finally said. “but Von Kessel is an honourable man, and a fine son of Sigmar. Roderick is in good company, he and the relic are both safe.”
It seemed the wizard had gotten the wrong idea about her trepidation. Definitely part of the plan, of course.
“Don’t count on them being safe so quick-quick, man-thing,” she insisted. “Couple days ago, the Snout left the burrow and took all his best rats with him. He left only few slavemasters to keep watch on the slaves.”
“Few?” Otto asked, the man quietly listening in up to this point. “There must have been hundreds upon hundreds of Skaven back there.”
“You underestimate the size of Snout’s vermintide, silly Otter. The glorious Lord Gnawdwell wants his relic back-back, and he’s putting all his tokens on the table for this one.”
“How big is this vermintide, miss Seeker?” Wilfred asked. “How many did he take with him?”
“All! Thousands. Thousands of thousands, and Ironsnout has the relic’s scent. He’ll burn this whole man-thing country down to get to it.”
“It is not just Brettonia that is in danger,” Wilfred muttered, watching the flames with a dim expression.
“How do you mean?” Otto asked.
“I told Roderick and Von Kessel to stick to the original plan,” he said. “They move north, towards the borders of the Empire, and Marienburg. This Skaven warlord will soon take to pillaging Imperial farms and homesteads. The Empire is already beset by Chaos armies, and if the Skaven approach from the rear…”
“Rick-rod will be caught in middle,” Skyseeker finished for him. “And we too far away to warn him! We need to move-move and find him, before the Snout finds him first.”
-xXx-
A certain level of friction had been expected when it came the day to march with their newest allies – if that was indeed what the orcs were now, allies – but Roderick found it was hardly much different from marching alongside the Brettonians. The orcs seemed to lack any form of discipline beyond obeying their Warboss and his lieutenants, under the threat they would be beaten bloody otherwise. They marched not in columns but in roving packs, mounted not on horses, but giant boars with tusks as big as his arm jutting from their slobbering snouts.
“Look at them,” Von Kessel muttered, up at the head of the column, along with the rest of his officers and Edouart’s commanders. “We’ve walked this road for three days and not a shred of decency or order about them. They whoop and holler by day and throw drunken brawls by night. Savages, the lot of them.”
“Think of it more as a ferocity unreachable by men, my liege,” Edouart remarked, each man bobbing int heir saddles as their horses marched. “One that my kith and kin use against our foes as much as able. Better to direct it at our foes than deal with it ourselves”
“Enemy of my enemy?” Von Kessel scoffed. “You Brettonians might be fickle enough to accept such proposition, but the Empire takes no such frivolities. We stand alone.”
“And that has turned out just well for you, hasn’t it Captain? It’s the Empire’s unwillingness to open its borders to anyone who isn’t part of the Sigmar cult that is its very undoing.”
“Says the man who worships a lake and is ruled by a king. What kind of government body works like that? Something from the first millennium, I would say.”
“Enough, both of you,” Roderick cut in. “Say what you will about the orcs, but at least they do not bicker about it.”
“Speech is far beyond their capacity, true,” Von Kessel said. “Murder and pillaging, now that is more to their skillset. What if the Emperor were here right now, witnessing us calling these things friends? There is no honour to employ a greenskin to the cause.”
“Edouart and his father gave us their word,” Roderick replied, the knight giving him a courteous nod.
Von Kessel muttered under his breath, pushing his horse into a faster trot, away from the pack but not so far as to separate from the column. Some of Edouart’s men who’d been listening in in snickered beneath their ornate helmets, some whispering in their native language that Roderick didn’t understand.
Roderick turned to scowl at them, then clicked his tongue, the ears of his horse picking as it picked up the pace. He trotted up beside the Captain, making sure they were out of earshot.
“You hear what the brat said about our Empire?” Von Kessel complained. “I had half a mind to send him back to his father that very moment, him and all his knights.”
“Antagonising him will do us no favours, Captain,” Roderick replied. “We called for his aid, after all. We need them on our side.”
Kessel gave him a sharp look. “You’re rather quick to forsake your countrymen and defend a foreigner’s word, Roderick. Clearly, all that time you spent with that Skaven has warped your allegiances.”
“In what way?” Roderick asked. “Do you suspect I’ve defected?”
“Why would I not? You share as much love for the Brettonians as you did for that rat, and you were adamant in taking in the orcs as well. You surround yourself with those as far removed from men as possible. You stray from Sigmar.”
The look Roderick gave was dead cold, his gauntlets clenching round the bridle hard enough to crush the leather. “Criticise my actions,” he muttered. “Criticise my past, my companions, but do not criticise my faith to Sigmar or the Empire, Captain. Everything I’ve ever done and will ever do, I do for the homeland.”
Von Kessel was quiet for a long time, until he shook his head and sighed, but not out of anger, but exasperation.
“I… did not mean it like that,” the Captain muttered. “I am just frustrated. I have been fighting Skaven and orcs all my life, and now suddenly I am expected to just forget all the barbaric things they’ve done to our people and fight with them.”
“Nobody is asking you to forget,” Roderick said. “This is simply what must be done. If the Chaos armies at Marienburg are even half the size of what the scouts report, then we need all the men we can get.”
“Orcs are not men, they are animals, and we have no guarantee they will help us when we need their support. What if the second we cross the borders, they abandon us and raid the countryside, as they have done countless times before?”
“They promised to assist us,” Roderick insisted.
“They promised to assist Duke Adalhard’s men,” Von Kessel corrected. “If the choice came to them, they would aid the Brettonians over us any day. That doesn’t sound like an ally to me, does it?”
“You… may have a point,” Roderick conceded. History may proclaim the Brettonain kingdom as the Empire’s friends, but their faith in Sigmar was tenuous at best, and the truth of it was that Edouart hadn’t come out of the goodness of his heart, he was under the Duke’s orders to snatch up land and resources once the war was won. At least their agenda was plaint o see, however. The orcs seemingly wanted nothing more to fight, but who? Did they care?
“We may be able to turn this in our favour yet,” Von Kessel continued. “The Empire stands alone, but perhaps you can forge us our own guarantees.”
“Me?” Roderick asked. “What could I do?”
“That staff you carried from the Southron desert,” Von Kessel said, glancing at the relic hanging from his belt. “The wizard told me of its significance, if you traversing half the world to get it wasn’t obvious enough of its power. It has thee power to strengthen our position, pehaps enough to cement the loyalty of these orcs.”
“And how would you know what it does?” Roderick asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Who do you think gave him permission to hide it away below deck? Wilfred informed me, of course. It was my ship, I had a right to know what kind of weapons get brought aboard, and what a weapon it could be, if what he told me was true. Can it really control he will of others?”
“I… am not certain,” Roderick muttered, and he clutched the haft of the relic before his mind had even process the action.
“Then why don’t you find out?” Von Kessel asked. “The wizard must have taught you something of magic, surely you can tap into tis power, direct it somehow? These orcs are simple creatures, it shouldn’t be all that hard to get into their minds with such a powerful relic.”
“Wilfred forbid me from using it,” Roderick insisted. “And I am no magician. I wouldn’t know the first step in doing something like that.”
“You must try, Roderick, for the Empire’s sake. As you said, we need every man we can get, but we also need weapons as well. If you could get these orcs to think of us as their friends, and not the Brettonians, we would be in a very strong position to stand against Chaos. Wilfred would understand if he were here.”
Roderick thought on the Captain’s words long into the night, when the host had retreated to their tents after erecting a camp in the foothills east of the road. Roderick’s shelter was as modest one could get for a ranking member of a marching army, smaller than a pavilion but bigger than a one-man lean-to, and he had the whole thing to himself. There wasn’t much inside beyond a sleeping spot and a couple of packs where he stored his meagre possessions, but that was downright luxurious in these current conditions he and the Imperials found themselves in.
It wasn’t so late in the day that their wasn’t activity outside, Roderick could hear laughter and chatter, underlined by the sounds of tin spoons tapping against bowls as supper was served, and beyond that he heard the louder, more booming voices of the orcs as they went about their business, just as frivolous in the night as the day. He briefly considered seeking out the orcess, Mazkha. She had been rather taken with his initial impression when he’d recruited her brother, and was genuinely interested in his old war stories, and she too hard a few of her own worth recalling. She’d told him of a terrific skirmish that had taken place in the Grey Mountains a couple years ago, not on the slopes of the mountains, but actually inside them, her warband having chased a group of dwarves back to one of their underground holdouts. The dwarves had employed powder keg charges to bring down the passageways to seal the orcs off, and they would have been buried alive if Mazkha hadn’t cleared the boulders away with her bare hands.
“I so did!” Mazkha had said when he’d expressed his doubt. “I bet I could lift you in all your shiny armour right over my head, want to try it?”
He had not, though he had to concede she looked capable of it, her biceps were almost as wide around as his waist. But his mind eventually turned towards the relic, which had come to rest beside his pillow whenever it wasn’t clipped to his belt. Von Kessel’s words interested him. He wasn’t’ entirely wrong to suspect the goals of the orcs and the Brettonians, was he? Roderick had also fought the greenskins before, they were vicious and violent creatures, if Edouart and his father’s promises weren’t here, they would be caught on the wrong end of the orc’s fury.
Using the relic, the powers of the warp, was a perfect contingency, but Roderick was hesitant. He may not know how to control the magics of the staff, but his mind did, to some capacity. He remembered the very moment he’d laid a hand upon the relic, in that temple of the tomb kings. It was like his mind had been fogged his whole life, and in that moment he had gained clarity, the air he’d breathed had felt cleaner, the muscles in his body had strengthened, and he felt power flow from the relic into his arm, as though strength had turned to liquid and its only outlet was Roderick himself.
Beyond that, he had detected Skyseeker’s intentions, as though her mind was a door that he had opened without any input. She had been scared, anxious, she had seen him become paralysed and had sought to destroy the relic with her remaining warp-blade. Yet he had stopped her, how? He couldn’t remember speaking, but she’d stopped in her tracks al the same, looking at him as though he were her commanding officer.