This is part two of an ongoing series of stories following the journey of The Lady Petra Hirkeit through The Silver Hills Age of Sigmar campaign. You can read more of the narrative here or start from the beginning.
The Silver Hills were different than she had remembered them. More verdant, full of life. Sweeping meadows full of wildflowers and greenery. From time to time small rodent like animals jutted their heads up from thickets of long grass, skittishly looked around, surveyed the landscape and disappeared back into the brush. It was all very pleasant.
Something was wrong, however, many of the geographical features felt familiar, but things were missing. The hill they were approaching should have a guard tower atop it, looking over the fields below. The path they were following was ancient and robust in her memory, but in reality it was nothing more than a rough pebble road, barely wide enough for three horses to ride abreast.
Other things were wrong too. She remembered the smells of industry that would waft by on the breeze, but with every influx of air the familiar scent never came. The silver the area was named for, it would appear, was to remain firmly in the ground.
Her throng of undead were aimed towards two of her holdings. Places she knew she could take stock of the situation, change into something more fitting and find a decent meal.
They’d finally arrived at the first, a small estate her family had maintained for generations on the outskirts of their lands. To Lady Hirkeit’s dismay, all that remained was rubble. Broken buildings, rocks strewn around and all but a few signs of paths and roads swallowed up by the encroaching wilderness.
This was wrong. She remembered a small but vibrant estate. Grandiose when compared to its size, though nothing contemptibly so. Small but comfortable. A loyal brace of subservient small folk to tend to your needs, and a nigh inexhaustible stream of sustenance. What was here wasn’t recognisable. It was so far removed from what she expected. It would take years for the estate to fall into this level of disrepair, for the wilderness to creep in and take over, decades!
The scope of her absence was beginning to take shape. The Order of Morr had done more than cut her down. More than desecrate her body, at least that’s what she suspected they’d done, they’d also stolen from her, taken years. They’d taken everything. Her station. Her lands. Her power.
But patience, she still had her patience. Patience enough to seek them out, to cut them down. Take everything from them.
Through gritted teeth Lady Hirkeit ordered her host onward, on to Whioll, a village long under her protection, dreading what they’d find there.
They followed the beaten path, at least the parts they could distinguish from the brush. It’d been a long time since anything more than a lone cart had traversed this route. This route that had been a major trade thoroughfare. The further they progressed the more the dread built.
Cresting a hill that lead down to the river that Whioll sat abreast, she saw what she was dreading, but had been expecting. Nothing remained of the village she knew. More broken ruins of buildings, trees now in place of familiar edifices, bushes and grass had taken residence here now. Nature had long since began the task of reclaiming the township for its own, slowly eroding all physical evidence of its presence. Her brow furrowed and her head fell as she led out an exasperated exhalation. Wait. Her eyes opened wide, head snapped back to attention, out of the corner of her eye she’d seen something. Some movement in the shadows of the ruins.
Her retinue were anything but stealthy, so she and Moltke left them behind and made their way to a bluff, where they could better survey the remnants of the town without being seen. Greenskins, small Orruks or Goblins of some ilk. There were dozens of them, picking through the undergrowth, looking for scraps. Some of them wrangled large bulbous red swines almost the size of the greenskins themselves. Others rode them, holding lances, like caricatures of knights.
She’d witnessed enough. It was an affront. It was bad enough what the Order of Morr had done, but this was a slight on her, on her family, on her name. These pests needed to be routed from her lands.
Moltke the Deathless led his retinue to war again, as he’d done many hundreds of years ago. They went on ahead as The Lady gathered the remainder of her horde. They entered the clearing of what used to be Whioll’s town square, the vermin that were sacking the ruins spotting them approaching ranked up to meet them head on.
The battle started and The Lady’s forces attacked with zeal. She struck down some of the green skinned invaders with an arcane attack. It all came back to her instantly, she could feel the energy prickle her skin before, with the utterance of a few syllables, she cut down multiple foes at once. She smiled. This was the catharsis she needed.
Across the battlefield the Wight King Moltke burst forth from the earth yet again. A sight reminiscent of his rebirth only a few days prior, he and his retinue clambered from the ground, this time to take their enemy unawares.
Lady Petra felt more alive than she had done, or had been, for what felt like aeons. With a flourish of the gift a pack of dire wolves were summoned from the grave, and fell heavily onto a mob of the red beasts.
Carnage ensued. Wolves fell and were risen by The Lady again. Moltke’s retinue were cut down in their entirety, only to claw their way back into the fray to tear down more of the greenskins. The knights flanked the enemy, taking the north eastern quarter of the square. Kaukas, who until now had been circling high above the battlefield, landed in the greenskins back line, tearing through crazed ball and chain wielding goblins that had suddenly appeared.
The battle raged on. The black knights were dispatched by the faux goblin knights charging through them. The faux knights wheeling round then charged headlong towards Lady Hirkeit.
More of the green skinned vermin began pouring out of a cave. Kaukas let out a shrieking wail and snapped at the mass of bodies, those he didn’t catch in his maw he chased down and stomped to a bloodied mess.
The rest of the battle was a haze of blood and viscera. Moltke was cut down and Petra didn’t even notice, she was too focused on the knights riding the red animals. Attack after attack she parried, dodged, sidestepped and repelled. She tore limb from limb and drenched herself in their blood as she executed them to their last.
Unstoppable waves of undead fell against the greenskins, again and again. The black knights tore back into unlife and back into the battle. The remaining forces of the greenskins melting away, fleeing into the wilderness.
The battle was done. Whioll was once again under the Lady’s patronage. But it was a hollow victory, it held none of its previous value to her. She called up her host and sallied them forth, leaving Whioll to its fate, to be wholly reclaimed by The Silver Hills.
Her sights were now trained on one the one place that would truly pain her to see in such ruin, Hirkeit Manor, her ancestral home.