01 - Empire in Chaos by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead)

killing blow. The beast shuddered as an
arrow punched through the back of its skull, piercing its brain. It toppled into
the snow beside Annaliese, blood leaking from its wounds.
    Annaliese rose shakily to her knees, wincing as she touched a hand gingerly
to her temple. She felt a wave of nausea overcome her, and she coughed and
retched the contents of her stomach onto the pristine white snow. The stink of
the creature was overpowering.
    Three sharp blasts were blown on a hunting horn, and Eldanair loosed several
more arrows, though Annaliese, her head pounding, could not focus on what he was
firing at. She gathered a handful of snow and held it against her head; the cold
numbed the pain.
    Wiping her mouth, she stared bleary-eyed at the corpses of the two creatures.
Shuddering, she looked away. Eldanair was kneeling at her side, concern on his
face, and he gently pulled her hand away from the rising lump on her head,
inspecting the wound carefully. Apparently satisfied, he nodded his head, and
went to the bodies of the dead beastmen, wrenching his arrows free from their
dead flesh and studying their tips, testing them on his thumb. He pulled free
Annaliese’s sword, and wiped the gore from it with a handful of snow. Spinning
it around in his hand, he presented it hilt first to the fallen woman.
    When she was able to stand, her legs shaking, Annaliese saw that the battle
was over. Milling people surrounded the wagons, and she heard the wailing of
women and the cries of children. She motioned to Eldanair that she was going
towards the wagons, and he nodded, pulling the hood of his cloak over his head
to hide his elven features. He moved out across the open ground to retrieve his
other arrows.
    As she drew close, she saw women crying over the bodies of dead men:
husbands, brothers or fathers. Others were binding the wounds of those lucky
enough to have survived, and a team of soldiers was struggling to get the lead
wagon moving, as it was stuck in a snowdrift.
    She saw a flicker of movement, and cried out when she saw a small boy, no
more than five years old, crawling through the snow towards a corpse on the
ground. Fresh blood was trailing behind the boy.
    No one was moving towards the child, and Annaliese ran to him. The man he was
crawling towards had the look of a farmer about him, and his head had been all
but severed from his body by a vicious blow to the back of his neck. Blood
soaked the snow around him.
    Kneeling, Annaliese took the boy in her arms, carefully turning him over. He
cried out, straining to see the corpse, and Annaliese felt tears spring to her
eyes as she saw the blood soaking the child’s tunic and the expression on the
child’s face as it contorted in pain. She clasped him to her, tears rolling down
her cheeks, soothing him with gentle words.
    “Da?” gasped the boy, his wide blue eyes fearful.
    “Shh,” soothed Annaliese, wiping her hand over his brow, brushing back his
sandy hair.
    “Where is Da?” the boy said again, blood frothing on his lips.
    “At peace,” said Annaliese softly. The boy cried out in pain, and Annaliese’s
heart wrenched. “Be brave, little warrior,” she said.
    She closed her eyes and prayed then, silently mouthing words to Sigmar. Angry
and bitter, she raged against the cruelty of the world, and beseeched the
warrior-god for mercy, tears running down her face.
    When she opened her eyes she saw that the boy was asleep, his heart beating
strongly against her.
    Annaliese laid him back against the ground, and ripped open his
blood-drenched tunic. She rubbed her hand across the flesh of his stomach,
expecting to find a deep wound, but the skin was unbroken. Her eyes widened in
shock.
    “You should leave him,” said a voice. “I saw the cursed spear strike him. It
was a cowardly blow, but not even a full grown man could have survived it.”
    Annaliese looked up into the sad, grim eyes of a farmer and smiled. “He is
not even