The Brave Band of Kislev 5
Erengrad.
Original capital of the Ungol people.
The queen of the River Lynsk.
Greatest port city in all the old world, only rivaled by the Imperial city of Marienburg.
A proud city, with a proud history and even prouder people.
A political class of merchants, rich enough to eclipse even the nobility, thinking themselves untouchable beyond vast city walls, massive fleets and gigantic mercenary armies.
The second city of all of Kislev, it had been ever urgent to spread tendrils of its influence, after Praag's fall to the teeming hordes of the cursed Everchosen and his legions of monsters. Be they two legged or not.
The capital of Kislev itself had been besieged and nearly crushed, but it had been saved by the intervention of the empire of Sigmar, those that claimed the title proclaimed themselves 'the' empire of man.
Yet its ruler, brave Alexis, had perished against Asavar Kull, his daughter and successor Kattarin seemingly untested and unready, for all that she showed herself a resolve to rival the Iceborn land itself.
She had even sacrificed frankly ludicrous amounts of lives and treasure to aid the imperial realm of Ostland and had received precious little in return for Kislev. All while the Motherland had barely even begun to recover from the desolation at the hands of the Everchosen, or at least so had some said.
Had some fools decided this was the perfect time to act? To humble the foolish little Tzarina, who dared expand her power to where it did not belong?
Mighty Erengrad, great Erengrad, ascendant Erengrad, it had been felled not to hordes of Darkness.
No grand heathen Army of norscans, with enough long boats to plot out the sea, had scaled its walls. No tide of vermin, birthed by that cursed brood nest of horrors in the north, boiled out of the sewers and overwhelmed it's defenders.
No.
Erengrad had been humbled by the very Tzarina it had sought to bring down.
If it had tried that, that was.
Khapilov had his doubts about that as he marched down the main street towards the great city. It was a grim sight, walking through rows and rows of those that may or may not have turned their backs on Kislev and the Tzarina.
It had to be thousands that were impaled that flanked the great road. Their flesh had long since rotted away or had been picked clean by carrion birds, leaving nothing but skeletons.
Many of the corpses still wore the clothes, signifying that they had been of great status in life, merchant princes, commanders of mercenary companies, captains of trade fleets. Undoubtedly there had been people who tried to get at the supposed riches hanging out here. He had no doubt that they had been dealt with.
Their signs of power did amplify the message quite significantly after all.
Despite everything he had seen over his life, he still felt the urge to shiver at the placement of the stakes. There was a trick involved with those, running them through a man without killing him. The victim was left alive, no blessings or magic required. No, death would be at the hands of weather or beasts, not by the executioners. Being left like that, helpless, cold, unable to move until death took him…
Khapilov was made of stern stuff but that still was a gruesome sight.
The actions of the hordes of Chaos had been worse. Tenfold, a hundred fold.
The aftermath of the few raids of the Elves on villages and coastal towns had been worse.
But for all that he was a loyalist to Kislev and Tsar Alexis - and thus his daughter - through and through, he couldn't help but be unpleasantly reminded of these dark days.
Even Uglinchinin, always cheerful and boisterous, was silent at the sight, one hand placed firmly on his ax as he sat on the large cart the two horses they purchased were dragging along.
One of three carts actually.
Upon hearing Uglinchinin's 'divinely inspired' idea to form a Mercenary company 'dedicated to fight the darkness of the world', Pyotir had looked like they had just killed his Mother and Babushka before his eyes, before trying to convince them for three weeks straight that maybe some other use would be more appropriate.
After accepting that both Khapilov and the priest of Tor had agreed on this use of the money, he had however thrown himself into purchasing a "practical starting set" of what any new Mercenary group would need.
Mainly armor, swords, spears, bows and plenty of shoes, bought from various smiths - both human and especially dwarfen - to outfit their men.
He had his doubts about the sudden onset of 'sickness' that made him claim he couldn't possibly head to Erengard, but after Uglinchinin had put him through some 'shock therapy' to stabilize his humors and energize his being, the man had seemed more willing to not bolt at the prospect.
Even if he was staring at every skeleton with an intensity of someone who had never seen a dead body.
Or someone who might have been once part of this class of merchant princes, of course.
It was an idea he was sure had come to Uglinchinin as well, but neither of them had said anything.
They had to discard their cold clothes more than once while retrieving the gold, and he had not seen any kind of mutation or other nefarious sign on his body, plus Tor's lightning would have surely burned him if he was in court with the fell powers.
In the end he was not one to blame an entire social group for the deeds of a few traitors, not to mention that sheer logistics and distance made it impossible for Pyitor to have been in Erengard during the Day of Ice and blood.
He had grown better though, the closer they came to Erengrad, steeling his nerves and face. He even stopped flinching after the third time they had to chase off some bandits who were after their new treasure and equipment.
Uglinchinin had wanted to seek out various stanistas and villages for their youth to recruit them, but he had decided against it. If there was a place that had the infrastructure to start a new mercenary band, it was Erengard.
Or so he had thought.
He had heard many different stories about the purging of the City's merchant princes, but it seemed he had been wrong to outright reject the more outlandish stories.
Such as rumors that Erengard had been razed to the ground, the soil itself salted, left in a cursed winter by the Widow. Or that no army had fought here, the Tzarina called upon dark powers to unleash horrors upon the city.
Those had been of course wrong, he saw the city before him, but a battle had definitely taken place here.
What Khapilov saw was an intact wall that had a new, shallow moat outside of them. No visible damage, just a lot of mud on the outside. For being stormed by an entire army, he expected much more damage than this.
Rumors did say that the Tzarina used her potent magic to create staircases over the walls, thick and wide enough that her army could simply march right over them into Erengard.
It sounded wild, and ordinarily Khapilov would dismiss it as nonsense. Magic defied logic as a rule, but the scale of those rumors sounded too vast to be true.
However, seeing the lack of scoured walls, and the lake that certainly wasn't there before, he reluctantly accepted the facts. He didn't know how else to explain the sight. Or the near constant terrified stories of what happened inside the city.
Erengard had been sacked during the great war of chaos, by Sven Bloody-Hand, but it had, from what he had heard, been lesser than the savage beating the defenses of Kislev City had sustained, neverminded Praag's complete and utter obliteration.
Which meant that this damage was the Tzarina's doing…. He shuddered internally.
It was a damned shame when Humanity's grand bastions were tested not by the fell powers but by humanity itself. And it was obvious the damage hadn't just been contained to Erengrad's formerly mighty walls.
The damage to the wall itself was minimal, though he still saw some burned watch towers. Apparently some men had to be dug out by force, or the attackers weren't interested in taking prisoners. It wasn't as if the Tzarina was shy about making examples, as the fields outside Erengard so enthusiastically demonstrated.
Most of the battlements looked intact, showing some damage from fires. That left them available for another message.
The battlements were filled with bodies, hanging on ropes down the Gate Tower and the more intact sections of wall, some in a similar state to the impaled merchant princes, some nauseatingly fresh.
Cities always had a certain smell to them. A natural consequence of so many people and animals living in closer parameters. Rarely was it pleasant, but it could be tolerable.
The sheer stench of death he took in while entering through the gates of the Queen of the Lynsk was something entirely else however.
Pyitor was retching back there, he had no wish to check.
The city itself was in a better state than the rumors implied, but that was due to the apocalyptic descriptions of what happened here.
Usually Erengard was the bustling heart of trade in all the north, not just of Kislev but of the empire and - to a FAR lesser extent - the less hostile inhabitants of troll country and Norsca as well.
On it's endless labyrinth streets, it's hundreds of city markets and all it's great trade houses and plazas, one could find almost everything, from great mammoth horns, Arabyian slaves, imperial wood, bretonnian wine, even goods from far distant Ulthuan, Ind and Cathay.
Its roads were boiling with tens of thousands of humans, dwarfs and even elves, either living here or seeking business benefits.
Now its streets were, while not empty for such a thing was near impossible for a city of this size, still far less lively than he remembered when he had been here in his youth. People hurried down the streets in a hushed and hurried manner, heads and faces pointed at the ground.
Where previously there would have been one hundred and one different merchants and sales men, seeking to gain the attention of anyone who entered the city with obvious means - as their little caravan would indicate, though obviously they didn't sprout just how wealthy they had become - there were now beggars.
Of course there were always those, but now they infested the streets, piteous figures, young and old, staring at them from outside empty alleyways, burned down and collapsed buildings, obvious hunger and desperation burning in their gazes.
He carefully pushed back his coat he was wearing to reveal his blade, simply as a precaution for any foolish ideas.
Behind him, however, he could hear how Uglinchinin raided the cart. Khapilov didn't need to look but he did anyway, seeing him tear open the sacks containing their food. There wasn't much, mostly bread and dried meat, a lot of the latter gained from hunting game on the way to Erengard. He still dug into it without hesitation.
For as big of a man as he was, Uglinchinin could still put on the friendliest demeanor possible. "Come on, ye faithful! Succor awaits!"
Only a few risked the offer, either trusting his smile or too hungry to care. He handed them food without hesitation, and when he ran out of takers he tossed food to those huddling in the ruins. A small number gave the thrown food space, several more fell on it.
When nobody kneeled over that was taken as a sign, inviting more destitute to the carts. Uglinchinin handed out bread to whomever came to him, though he had a bigger smile when he gave food to children, even patting the heads of some.
He was fairly sure that most of the beggars here were not in particular worshippers of Tor, but he also had a suspicion that the gigantic priest didn't care.
The way he organized the beggars, especially the kids, pushing those that tried to steal food off him gently back, while bellowing what was almost a sermon was so radically different from the downright mad man he was in combat, he damn near had to do a double take.
It was a scene that repeated itself multiple times on their way to the mercenary plaza, with Uglinchinin even going out of his way to buy loads and loads of food of the various stands and business that were indeed still open, using his own money as to not show the piles of coin in their possession to the general public.
Not that he was alone in this though.
The deeper they came into the city, the more he saw of them, men and women, flying the colours of the Romanov dynasty, handing out cartloads of food to the masses, while loudly proclaiming this as a gift sponsored by the Tzarina herself.
Not only that, they were also guarded by Kossars and Streltsi who, at least by attitude and appearance. seemed to be on good terms with the locals. Possibly that they were from Erengrad itself?
Similar stories showed themselves with what damaged buildings here. An entire army's worth of not slaves but carpenters, builders and other craftsmen, busily working at restoring what had been destroyed, all the while praising the Tzarina in their working songs.
They had to stop when an entire convoy of workers crossed the road, carrying logs, stones, tools, mortar, and whatever else was needed to build. Dozens, hundreds of men, and even a few women, lugging what were clearly heavy loads to a construction site. Khapilov had to wait a short spell until a cart rumbled past, the two horses struggling to pull a huge pile of bricks towards the site.
When they arrived they didn't rest, the cargo was sorted into the appropriate sections before the porters immediately got to work. Carpenters were hammering in supports as fast as they arrived, masons were laying down stone just slower than their piles were filled, brick walls were being laid at tremendous speeds. Ramps were put up, not even fully settled when laborers were ascending them to a second or even third stories, beginning to lay down floors above the toiling workers below.
No one voiced a complaint, or even seemed too unenthusiastic about the labor.
It seemed that after beating the city down with pure force, the ruler of all Kislev intended to show it's people what the alternative was.
He at least hoped it would be effective in preventing further bloodshed.
—----------------------------
Khapilov had been on the great Mercenary plaza of Erengrad before, when the military detachment he had been a part of was reinforced by some hired blades.
It had been just as diverse a place for its 'wares' as the rest of Kislev had been. Arabyians with great slave cohorts, famous Tilean bands, representatives of some of the greater mercenary companies, veteran groups from one of the many imperial conflicts…. Even ogres, dwarfs and other non-humans had offered their services.
There had been fighting pits where different mercs showed off their skills, even an entire field purely for 'simulated' clashes when a client wished to see what their new hires could do, whatever it was they were hired for.
It had been damn nigh an entire city district in itself and now….
The only parts of the city that might rival in how it had been leveled were the individual palaces and residences of the various princes.
The different areas for certain companies? The stands, fighting grounds, company buildings, testing ranges for magics and bows alike?
Gone. Obliterated so fully that even the earth still showed craters where explosions and spells went off. Small holes with chunks of metal scattered around them, numerous and scattered at random. Larger holes, fewer in number and individually deep, with scorched stone in and around them, big enough to collect water. Muddy pits that he did not wish to inspect, for fear of what he would uncover.
The stands were utterly shattered, nothing larger than a sapling was left, the wood mulched until it mixed with the mud. Stone was similarly pulverized, the chunks of gravel he saw were sharpened instead of smoothed over. As if they were broken rather than worn down.
No banner was left. No emblem, no sigil, not even a drawing was in sight. Everything that could have been a symbol was scrubbed away.
"W-what in the Widows name happened here?" Pyotir at last spoke, for the first time since they had entered Erengrad. "I've been here before…. The different mercenary companies stationed here could have formed entire armies by themselves!"
"That's probably the reason why things are so busted up then." Uglinchinin jumped off his cart and stepped up to observe the devastation. "This was probably one of the places of most resistance. From what I've heard of the kids and adults alike, all the mercenaries were given the choice to either be pressed into service with the grand army or to die with the Merchant Princes." He eyed what looked like what had probably been once a fort for one of the greater of Mercenary companies. The half of it that was still standing that was.
It was also still partially encased in ice.
"Pretty obvious what the folks around here chose to do." He growled, before spitting. "Damn waste."
"Yeah. I had hoped to perhaps hire off different smaller mercenary groups as the core for the new one, but that obviously will not be possible now." Looking around, he saw the mercenary guild hall, which was just about the only place around here where there still were a handful of people, obvious dredges of society, armed with nothing but scraps.
There was perhaps no cadre of disciplined warriors in this city for him to find. But in exchange, there were all the more desperate people, who would do anything for money.
And as a droyaska, he was more than used to having to make do.
"Alright." Khapilov hopped off his horse, grunting as he stretched his legs. "Let's get started."
