Ulric the Black leads his forces into the east. Battle One

I
The two Nordland halberdiers stood awkwardly as Ulric the Black knelt before bare foot, in the snow before the shrine of Sigmar.

He had been there all night, but rather than succumb to the cold, the snow had melted around him so that there was a patch of wet ground in the midst of all the snow.

'Sire!' the first halberdier cleared his throat. 'The enemy have been sighted.'

Only at the word 'enemy' did Ulric look up. 'The cold-bloods,' he called the lizard folk. 'Have they accepted our offer of peace?'

'No sire.'

The emissary was brought to him. There was a sickly colour to his skin.

'I tried to parley,' he said. 'But they answered me with these.'

He held up what looked like sharpened twigs. 'Poison darts,' he said.


II
Father Ulric surveyed the battlefield. On the left wing, a demi-lance of battle hardened Knights Teutonia kicked their warhorses forward. In the centre the main body of the army, drew up in ordered ranks, with halberdiers in close support.

Hovman Daark stood at the fore, while the Sigmar banner flapped stiffly overhead.

Hovman Daark was already in the middle of some spell, and he suddenly turned and grinned. 'There was a mage with them. One of the little lizards. He reached out to me, and I crushed his soul and sent it back over the seas to where ever they have come from.'


III
The Knights Teutonia saw lizard cavalry ahead of them, and they spurred their horses forward. They hit a skirmish line of small lizards with blowpipes and although they cut them down all around them, somehow, beyond hope, the little blue-skinned creatures did not flee. And as the knights cut the last of them down, the enemy cavalry charged forward and took the milling knights in the flank.

IV
Ulric led the swordsmen forward towards the main body of the enemy. They came forward with an eerie silence, only the flicking of red tongues any indication that these strange creatures felt anything approaching fear.

Hovman Daark was in the middle of his scorceries. The temperature suddenly dropped, and a whirlwind stirred in front of him, and then a dust devil swirled up, and deepened and blackened as it dragged dirt up with it.

It was a dreadful purple colour as Hovman hurled it forward straight into the face of the approaching foe.

There was a dreadful silence as scores of the foe were dragged into the unearthly maelstrom. Only four were left when the maelstrom passed.

Ulric dropped his arm in a brief order. The hellblaster roared, barrel after barrel, and when the smoke had cleared, not a single lizard was left standing. There was a strange silence, and a few blooded bodies twitched on the ground. Some of the men made the sign of Sigmar, or mumbled prayers to Morr. No one could witness such slaughter, without feeling sympathy for such creatures.

It was unfortunate, looking back, that this was the moment, that suddenly from beyond the woods a single raving horseman came galloping. The Knight's Teutonia's chaplain: a thin and sour-faced man.

'Slaughter! Horror!' he shouted, 'they are all dead. All your brothers. Devils on monsters are coming! Flee Flee!'

Ulric smote the man across his face. 'Silence, coward! This day is won!'

But chance played strange games on battlefields, and even as he spoke the first shouts were raised, and soon the whole company was falling back in disorder.

'Stand!' Ulric shouted. 'Stand you fools! We have but to face these monsters down and the day is ours!'

DRAW