Read Online 01 - Empire in Chaos by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead) - Free Book Online Page B

teeth.
    Another fell, a sword piercing his stomach, and Grunwald kicked him savagely
in the head as he went down. A blade slashed across his shoulder and he grimaced
in pain, and brained his attacker, the ridge edges of his heavy mace shattering
the skull.
    He heard a string of shouted words; phrases yelled in a language that
he didn’t know.
    Hissing against the pain in his shoulder, Grunwald, saw the towering,
black-cloaked figure of the witch hunter Stoebar battling against a trio of
assailants, consummate swordsman, his sabre flashed out, slicing open the throat
of the first, and whipped back quickly enough to block a lethal cut from another
foe that would have disembowelled him.
    “With me!” shouted Grunwald, and pushed his way through the press of bodies
towards the witch hunter, his mace crushing shoulders and breaking limbs.
    The soldier to his left died as a spear was thrust into his throat, and
another to his right was dropped as a knife plunged into his thigh. Still, the
weight of the soldiers smashed the snarling cultists aside, clubbing them to the
ground and plunging swords into their prone forms.
    A wave of revulsion and nausea washed over them, and Grunwald staggered. He
heard a voice chanting in an unholy language, and he felt his stomach contract
tightly and painfully.
    Again the witch hunter’s voice sounded out.
    “Sigmar, lend us strength!”
    Grunwald felt the pain within him lessen, and he opened his tightly clenched
eyes to see a figure standing on a dais, arms raised over its head as its chant
reached a crescendo.
    The witch hunter Stoebar cut down the last of his opponents and leapt up the
stairs towards the figure, and Grunwald staggered after him.
    With a shout that hurt the eardrums with its intensity, the figure completed
the incantation and dropped his arms to his side. A high collar of iridescent
feathers framed the zealot’s lowered head. Naked to the waist, swirling blue
patterns had been painstakingly etched onto his skin. Grunwald saw the twisted
patterns begin to move, rotating in circular motions, weaving new patterns and
symbols upon the zealot’s flesh.
    With a roar of pure hatred and loathing, Stoebar raised his long bladed sabre
over his shoulder as he drew near the coven leader, and the sword flashed out to
open the throat of the motionless figure.
    Throughout the basement, the last of the cultists were hacked down, and the
state soldiers of Nuln closed in towards the dais, gripping their bloody weapons
tightly as they watched the fateful blow fall.
    Half a foot before the blade struck flesh the blow was halted. In mid-air the
witch hunter’s blade stopped, and he gasped as he strained to complete the
killing strike.
    The zealot raised its head then, blue fire flickering in its eyes and a smile
upon its lips.
    The air around the sorcerer seemed to ripple as if with a wave of intense
heat, and his flesh bulged unnaturally, as if things within were trying to
escape as line of backwards curving barbs pushed through the skin of his
forearms, forming a deadly ridge of horns and his hands extended into long,
cruel talons, like those of some mutated eagle. Mouths screaming in obscene
languages opened up all over the zealot’s body, ripping through muscle and
flesh. Some were filled with needle-like teeth and long, sinuous tongue tipped
with thorns, while others were little more than bony beaks filled with tiny,
barbed teeth.
    Stoebar seemed unable to move, and the creature reached forwards, gripping
him by the shoulders. Blood welled where the daemon-possessed zealot’s talons
bit into his flesh, and it drew him closer to its hideous, maddening form.
    Then, merely by willing it so, the Chaos abomination ripped the witch
hunter’s chest open. As if unseen knives slashed him, the clothes and armour of
the witch hunter were slashed dozens of times, and the flesh was turned to
bloody tatters. Ribs were snapped as his rib cage was pulled back by