>>31899920But after wanderings endless
And monster slay, beasts battle
How many of them of dread daemons
Ichor draw, skulls shatter
But when he did Angraath awful
Dread Khorne's evil equerry
Eight days and eight nights rumbling battle
Cities shatter, stars crush
Was the Wolfking wounded and from the sky fell,
Bloodied and battered to earth tumble...
There was a man called Þorvegr, son of Grimni Helgisson, of Bjárgarð 138th, and though of many valiant men, on Vanaheim were they by hordes unending outmatched, for though the Fyrdmenn were bold, the years of artillery shelling had reduced the cities to rubble and the smoke and ash blotted out the sun.
For every cultist they felled, more rose to take their place and nightly there was the rumbling of daemon engines.
When the pale dawn broke, it was with the blood red of an ash chocked sky and it was greeted with the roars of the cultists preparing another assault.
So had it been for five years, and yet the blood of men had bought only worthless hills on a dead world.
Contact with the fleet had been lost a year ago and without resupply, the advance had stalled.
And now there was little to them left, save to sell their lives for as high a price as they could fetch, a forgotten footnote for the Imperial war engine in this time of waning.
Þorvegr did not fear death, nor did his men. They'd accepted that this would be their grave in the second year, when the trenches had been dug and the Kriegers were withdrawn for higher priority battles.
They had long accepted that their situation was hopeless and that gave them some sort of perverse will. Instead, what filled Þorvegr with despair was how long they were holding out. It was almost as though the heretics were playing a game, spending lives to see if they could break the will of Þorvegr without ever having to break his body. And Þorvegr was afraid that they'd win.
(This is really hard in english...)
