THE FIRST BATTLE FOR BELVEDERE

[Xarkly 17299]

 

Spoiler

 

 

The Demonbane Banner rippled in the steppe’s wind.

 

The frayed and bloodstained cloth of that banner - the same that had once cloaked Caius Primus in the Battle of the Hexicanum - flew above a party of riders. Their colours varied, from the blue-green crests of the Reinmaren lancers, to the scarlet surcoats of the Exalted Knights, and the snowy cloaks of the commandos White Comet, but their purpose did not.

 

As they left the walls of Kretzen behind them, they were guided by a plume of woodsmoke that climbed into the sky from the forests of north-western Reinmar - the forests that shrouded the approach to Belvedere, the prize of their campaign.

 

Beneath his winged helmet, Villorik narrowed his eyes grimly at that trail of smoke. So, he clenched his jaw, the Goat is coming out to play this time.

 

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When he beheld the source of that smoke, anger boiled with Cardinal Ivan.

 

The massive Lorraine Cross - some twelve feet tall - had been erected in the middle of a clearing of corrupted soil, encrimsoned with an infernal taint, and it burned. It was not just mundane flames that consumed the Cross, though; fresh hides of butchered animals had been draped over its limbs and stuffed into its hollows, and those strips of flesh burned with the sickly teal glow of Malflame.  

 

His knuckles ached as he gripped his halberd in a vice. He stood on foot, now, astride the others of the Church ranks that formed their infantry - himself, Prince Sigmar, Ser Lug, Villorik, and Brother Laurens. “What,” he seethed through grit teeth, “is this?” 

 

The answer was obvious, and no sooner had it muttered the words did a rasping laugh echo through the forest clearing. The helmeted heads of he and his comrades quickly darted to the trees encircling them as they heard the laugh, and movement. Heads began to poke out, eyes agleam with intent, and hands smouldering with Malflame. 

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

From across the clearing, Ren glared at the Church warriors.

 

The tiny mouths marring his flesh gnashed and bit hungrily as the lumbering Demon stomped forward, and, despite his glare, he still could not help but laugh as they stared at the burning Lorraine Cross. 

 

“Do all Demons find such humour in little things?” came a call from one of the Churchmen. Ren knew the voice - Villorik’s voice. His dozens of mouths bayed impatiently at the thought of devouring that one. 

 

“Do all holy men take such easy offence?” Ren growled back as he stopped, separated from the would-be crusaders by a mere twenty feet. In the treeline just behind him, his underlings prepared - Ren could practically taste the maleus in the air. 

 

“Ren,” Villorik bit back. The sight of the Ordermen, hunkered behind their shields as the court of Belvedere prepared to drown them in a sea of Malflame, was enough to bring a twinge of satisfaction through Ren’s hate. “I thank you for what you did for Amari, all those years ago,” Villorik went on in that insufferably passive tone, “but what Caius told you was no lie. Since that day, you have been living on borrowed time.” 

 

The laugh that wracked Ren was without mirth. “And did you tell your little friends what that day was all about, Priest?” he spat. “The Pontiff and his best friend, making deals with Demons?” 

 

A brief moment of silence hung in the air through the clearing, before the Priest answered. “I thought you were a warrior, Ren.” With a thrum of steel and metal, the Ordermen locked their shields together as they faced him. “And warriors … do not fight with words.” 

 

The Malflame - swirling white and grey - bloomed into life in Ren’s hands, forming a long, interlinking of chain. “RIP EVERY SHRED OF SKIN FROM THEIR BONES!” Ren boomed, then, as his kindred stoked their own fires.

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

From a cliff overlooking the burning Cross, Prince Erwin watched the battle begin.

 

The trained warhorses of his retinue brayed patiently, unphased by the sudden shouts in the clearing below. Their riders were similarly stalwart, their shouldered weapons and helmets flashing in the light of the setting sun as it fractured through the tree line. With a swell of pride, Erwin looked back to the Cross. Their plan had been for the Church Ordermen to engage the Demons on foot, so as to draw their fire and enable the Reinmaren cavalry to strike at their flank … Well, it is certainly working. 

 

The knot of Ordermen had locked their shields together in the middle of the clearing while Ren’s Demons snaked their way out from the cover of trees. A flash of white-grey lit the clearing as a chain of Malflame lashed at the Ordermen, and their formation scattered when another column of twisted hellfire bloomed upwards at their feet. 

 

“That, I daresay,” Erwin declared, then, and he lifted his Thanhium mace, “is our cue. Ritters, with me!” 

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

The whip of pale Malflame cracked into Villorik’s chest.

 

The wind left him as he was thrown to the tainted ground, and sent rolling several feet. In that moment of pain, he was only vaguely aware of Ivan’s yell as the column of Malflame bit at him while he and Laurens tried to retreat from it. Villorik lifted his gaze with a shaky breath, and locked eyes on Ren as the chains of Malflame coiled around his scaled hands, preparing for another blow. 

 

That blow came a split second later as the chains reeled like a baying viper, and that lashed out towards Ivan and Laurens mid-retreat. The rapid breath whistled through his teeth as Villorik lunged forward, and he felt the nails of his shield beginning to give way as he slammed his bulwark into the path of the Malflame. The torrent parted around his shield like a wave breaking on a rock. 

 

As Villorik lowered his shield, he settled his glare on Ren through the motes of silvery Malflame drifting through the air, and the tiny mouths gnashing from the Demonlord’s flesh. Glaive in hand, Villorik charged.

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

Ivan was no stranger to the sting of Malflame.

 

He had felt its soul-scourging before, when he faced hellfire in defence of his niece at the Holy See, and so the pain that wracked his body now was a familiar one. Even so, knowing the pain did little to numb it, and he struggled to stifle his scream and the panic as he felt it claw at his flesh, burning, starving … 

 

He was only aware of Laurens standing above him when his comrade had pulled him from the blaze, and smothered his leg in the tainted dirt. “Can you stand?” Laurens called over the sounds of growling Demons, and thundering hooves - the Reinmaren were coming. A fresh haze of Malflame - broken by Villorik’s shield, bloomed just overhead as Laurens offered Ivan a gauntleted hand.

 

Ivan did not dare unclench his teeth and speak for fear of letting out another yell - even with the Malflame extinguished, there was no equal to the pain of its burns - but he clasped Laurens hand with a burning resolve, and rose to his feet. He exchanged a nod with his brethren, before they both charged in behind Villorik.

 

At Ren.

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

The wind whipped at Erwin as their horses charged.

 

At the forefront of the Reinmaren cavalry, he crested around the clearing where the burning Lorraine stood, and forced himself to ignore the continual flashes of Malflame from within as the Ordermen were bombarded - their plan, their victory, depended on their horsemen reaching the Demons while they focused their Malflame on Villorik, Ivan, Laurens, Sigmar, and Lug. 

 

“Wer Rastet!” Erwin yelled the Waldenian battlecry as brandished his mace of Thanhium, and he watched the Demons in the clearing stir in discomfort as they felt like their magic sap in its presence. 

 

“DER ROSTET!” his riders echoed, and their horses slammed into the Demons’ rear. At Erwin’s left, Herman streaked towards one of the mailed Demons as it struggled to conjure a spray of Malflame to turn on their horses, while the Prince himself honed in on a larger Demon in the rear. 

 

It was … odd. He never faced these creatures before, and, by every description, they were beasts to be feared. But, as his horse carried him forwards and Erwin gripped his mace, it all felt so … right.

 

With a blur of Thanhium, Erwin swung his mace through the air, and eviscerated a flying Imp in a burst of blood and maleus. 

 

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Ren glided back as two of the Ordermen cut shallow wounds on his torso.

 

His shoulder spasmed in residual pain when he fell back to his feet at a safe distance; one of those wounds had been inflicted with Argentum. The Goat Prince let that pain subside as he scanned the forest battlefield; the Reinmaren had crashed into his minion’s rear, and, though spurts of Malflame burned back and forth as they did battle, he could see the outcome of the battle being written in blood.

 

No matter. The wellspring of hate - of rage - that surged within him was enough to even drown out the scorch of his Argentum wound. These fools have but one life. He raised a hand, and the mouths lining his forearm began to exhale streams of maleus that coalesced in his palm. They will not outlive the Goat. 

 

To his left, he watched as one of his Demonkin - Eldruin - flail his arms in retreat from two Reinmaren horsemen. Overlapping curses swam in Ren’s head as he balled a fist on his brewing maleus, and a portal - a tear in the Material - opened around Eldruin. The Demon let out a short-lived gasp before the getaway swallowed him into Moz Strimosa, away from the bating Human weapons. 

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

Villorik slowed his charge.

 

His lungs laboured for breath and his legs throbbed with pain from where his mail had warded off strikes of Malflame, but that was not why he stopped. The Reinmaren had swarmed the clearing, and scattered the Demons with their charge. One Demon had vanished through a portal; another, a female, was sprinting off in the direction of Belvedere; and Sigmar’s blessed blade was poking through the midsection of a panther-like creature, spewing thick, dark blood. 

 

As the stench of smoke and burnt flesh hung in the air, Villorik looked back to Ren as Lug and Ivan advanced in tandem on the Demonlord. With a flex of mouth-lined arms, another portal - a twisting gateway of churning reds, greys, and blacks - opened behind Ren. Before the Demon could step through it, though, Lug closed the distance between them, his blade slicing down.

 

But that blade never reached Ren.

 

With a crunch of steel, teeth parted along Ren’s stomach, and the mouth clamped down on Lug, shredding through metal and flesh alike. As blood seeped out, into that stomach mouth, Villorik watched the ecstasy flash across Ren’s face, like he had just taken his first bite of meat after weeks of starvation.

 

“Lug!” cried Ivan, as he and Laurens began to pull their bitten comrade as Ren’s teeth released his flesh. 

 

Villorik, though, eyed only Ren, and the Demon eyed him in turn as he took a step into that portal to retreat. With a rumble of hooves, Erwin began to bear down on Ren, his Thanhium mace sheening with a misted light as he raised it to strike.

 

“ … See you soon, Ren,” was all Villorik muttered as Ren vanished through the portal.

 

⋅ ───────⊱༺༻⊰─────── ⋅

 

Erwin’s mace whooshed through the air where Ren had stood only a second ago, but no longer.

 

Just like that, the hiss of Malflame faded from the forest clearing, as did the clang of steel. For a moment, there was silence but the rush of the nearby river, the drone of the waterfalls in the distance, and the burning of the Lorraine in the clearing.

 

That silence endured only for a moment; Lug’s cries of pain as Laurens and Ivan secured him to a horse contrasted with the cheers of victory from the Reinmaren as they raised their weapons, stained with ichor. 

 

Though the war was yet far from over, the First Battle for Belvedere had been decided. 

 

[wowj 9753]

HONK HONK :o) Reverend Father Theodore Brae honked his nose happily! Oh how glad he were that the Knights came back home in one piece!

[Wavey 2568]

Fiery flames falter not.
 

For their phantom pains linger upon Ivan’s skin. Yet they had persevered. The Cardinal lamented in disappointment at the fact that the demon lord known as REN was so close at their finger tips, only to vanish once more through its unholy chicanery of magic and mockery. Nevertheless, he was ready to give his blade for his brothers and sisters again once called upon. For they had won this battle, but the darktide never ceases in its onslaught.