"Don't mention it." he replied, his voice strong but hoarse from the smoke of the surrounding weapons. Unnatural abominations were impaled upon the halberds that were laid down to halt their mass advance. Those that slipped by like snakes were engaged by the swordsmen. The melee was thick with screams and blood. An axe spun out of the fray and embedded itself into the head of a rifleman, the impact and area of the hit caused the newly made corpse to spasm and send its weapon flying upwards. 

Cerdic stuck his broadsword blade into the ground and caught the falling weapon. He readied it and placed the butt of the weapon on its shoulder and fired into the helmet of an approaching Chaos warrior, causing the armored heretic to spasm and buck, but gather itself up once more, slowly lifting its fallen sword from the ground. Cerdic threw the gun at the warrior, ripped his sword out of the ground and hewed into its neck before it could collect itself, hacking thrice before the blackiron foe fell. 

He blocked a scimitar slash from an Elk headed beastman with an underhanded parry, kicked its leg and made it stagger before driving his blade into its gut. Anger was across his visage, and he pushed forward with his considerable weight, sending the beastman careening back into its approaching fellows, bleeding to death. All around the tumult of battle raged. Beside him, this Pistolier woman made a good account of herself it seemed, firing with accuracy and holding her sword well. 

Unbeknownst to Cerdic, Hilde suddenly received a small tug at her trouser legging. It wasn't a small mutant or a beastman. It was a diminutive man wearing the robes and attire of a learned professor. He had an arrow in his gut and desperation in his eyes. "Please..." he wheezed, shakily reaching into his shirt and revealing a vial of what looked to be a curious silver gunpowder. "Take it...this...must make it t-to Nuln...give it to the Countess...." 

Cerdic withdrew his blade out of an Ungor's chest, kicking the flailing thing back, hacking off a smaller mutant's head with his next swing. Swordsmen hacked and stabbed while Halberdiers chopped and gave fine thrusts. Smoke and loud cracks still filled the air, and in the distance a shining hammer could be seen within the crowd of bodies rising up, sewing death wherever its strokes fell. But Cerdic knew, despite his faith in Sigmar, that this would not end the way they needed it to... 
[@Austronaut]