B is for Bloodsedges

“We knew our place on the field as the Shield Wall. Behind us the halberdiers would line up and behind them another line of halberdiers. We were a spiny pig, nay, spiny linked pig sausages, plodding across the low hill to the thick hedge separating the fiefs. On the shield wall we pissed, vomited, or cursed our neighbor front or back for stepping on boots or pushing to fast.

“We were all going to get to the same place at the same time, more or less, why rush it. I, myself, prayed to Sigmar for strength. His hammer was prominently placed on my sweating forehead by the warrior priest just hours ago. I knew that on the other side of that hedge was a spiny pig line just like mine and soon we would crash into each other.

“My short sword was tied to my wrist by a leather strap. If I dropped it, it would be lost. Shield bashing was a tactic, but it only got you so far. Best to have sharp, pointed steel following your shield; high, low, or right into the greenskin in front of you.

“I can say this to you, what happened next I'll never forget. The first greenskins start pushing out of the hedge, almost like they were being birthed. Stumbling, getting their feet, then followed by a wolf rider with a whip or cudgel to get the ones then twos back in formation. What fools we were! Slow on the advance, we gave these foul creatures the high ground!

“Then! Oh then! Sigmar and Taal be praised! The screams from the hedge! Blood curdling screams. Headless goblins, or goblins missing arms, ears, even legs, burst or crawled out of the hedge. Blood soaked wolves without riders, or riders holding back their spilling guts. 

“Those greenskins that stood there on the line above us, turned, wide eyed, and stumbled backwards toward us. We had hesitated for a moment, then the shouts from the calvary in our rear rose over the screams in front of us: ‘Forward! Charge!'"

“The rout was quick and total. 400 of the Empire's best against a panicked force of two score and maybe three wolf riders, one that died cowardly, turning foolishly back into the hedge in a doomed retreat.

“No trophies for me. Few for others. We all stopped short of the hedge. Up close the hedge seemed to throb, from what could only be it feasting on the foul black blood of the greenskins. We approached no further than a man's height. We watched and listened. It could have been us pushing through that hedge to the other side. Praise Sigmar and Taal; Taal especially for that Bloodsedge."

From the history of the Eagle's Claw Company, as told to its historian by Sergeant Wolfgang Von Fleugwiener, Shield Veteran

Editor's Note

The Bloodsedge might be likened to the hedge as seen in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the theatrical version. Only much deadlier. Much deadlier.

In the Old World of Warhammer there are numerous gods, good, indifferent, and evil. In the fiction of Warhammer, Sigmar is a the patron god of the Empire, a mortal hero deified by his contemporaries. Taal is the god of nature and the wild places of the Old World. 

A fictional world of polytheistic belief, especially a world where the miracles of faith and the gods are manifest by priests and priestesses, good, indifferent, and evil, one should find many mortals worshipping or paying respects to all of them. Even gods of lesser cults. While Sergeant Fleugwiener may have special reverence for Sigmar, he most certainly would not have forgotten thank Taal for the Bloodhedge. He may have even sought out a way temple or larger temple later for drop a penny for thanks.