He hoped she was somewhere safe now. He hoped she had delivered his warning to the Ice Queen and had sense enough to remain behind in the capital. Most likely not though. She had always been willful, just like her mother, and, if he was honest, just like him. She had most likely followed that young Felix Jaeger, and since he followed Gotrek Gurnisson that meant she had most likely marched straight into trouble again. All he could do was pray to the gods to watch over her and hope Ulric was not too busy to listen to an old man’s prayers.

“We go south,” he said in his most determined voice. “We’ll hit these blue-furred bastards as they try to cross the Urskoy and then head on. The Ice Queen must have sounded the assembly horn by now and be heading north to Praag. We’ll meet her there and drive the Chaos worshipping scum back to the desert from which they came.”

His men cheered raggedly, almost as if they believed his every word. Once again, he was proud of them. Like him they had seen the true size of the horde— and, like him, they must know it was invincible.


Max Schreiber looked out from the walls of Praag into the gloom. Out there, he knew, the greatest army assembled by the forces of Darkness in two hundred years was waiting, readying itself to sweep over the lands of humanity in a tide of blood and fire. Perhaps this time, the Chaos worshippers would succeed. The gods knew how close they had come in times past, far closer than most men alive today would believe possible. Every time in the past they had been pushed back, at high cost, but every time the Chaos Wastes had advanced a little further, and had not retreated. Every time the world had become a little more corrupt, the hidden followers of Darkness a little stronger.

Max knew about such things. He had spent most of life studying them when he had not been studying magic. He had sworn an oath to oppose the worshippers of the Ruinous Powers however he could when he had joined his secret brotherhood. At this exact moment, he was wondering whether that oath had led him to the place of his death. Looking out into the night he could see the vast cloud of dark magic hovering over that distant army. To his sorcerously trained senses, the currents of power flowing through it were evident. There were powerful mages at work out there, he knew, and they were mobilising forces that should have been too great for any mortal sorcerer to control.

Who said they were mortal, Max thought sourly? They did not have to be. Time flowed queerly in the Wastes, and one of the most common reasons men submitted themselves to the Darkness was that they sometimes granted immortality or something close to it. And not eternal life in some distant paradise where you went after death either, but real eternal youth in the flesh, in this world. Eternal life and power. Two things many men had no qualms about giving up their souls for.

Max knew too that they were fools. Nothing came without its price, particularly not power borrowed from the Dark Lords of Chaos. They were like money lenders who charged ruinous interest. You gave up your soul, a small intangible thing that many people truly did not believe existed, and by doing so, you gave up everything. You surrendered your life and your will to the Dark Ones.