The Battle of Grunburg

As the great Chaos incursion of the Everchosen swept south, a hundred small tragedies unfolded in its shadow, and few were bleaker than The Battle of Grunburg. The keep of Grunburg stood upon the marches of Ostland, a modest fortress never built to withstand the doom that now descended upon it. Its garrison of the empire-of-man numbered a few hundred soldiers, state troops and militia, and against them came a spearhead of Archaon's endless horde.

The commander knew there would be no relief. Every sword was needed to the south, at Middenheim, where the war would truly be decided. So the defenders of Grunburg resolved to sell their lives for time, to bleed the horde and delay it upon their walls even by a single day. The warriors-of-chaos fell upon the keep in a black tide, and the assault was ceaseless, day into night into day.

The walls broke. The gate splintered. The defenders fell back chamber by chamber, fighting for every stair and doorway until the stones ran slick with blood. In the end not one of the garrison survived, and Grunburg was left a gutted ruin. The keep's sacrifice earned no monument and little memory, yet the hours it bought were paid forward to the greater battle beyond. In the grim arithmetic of the Empire's darkest hour, such deaths were not wasted. Merely spent.