by Dan Abnett
Gilead stood, braced, on the low, tiled roof of a midden overlooking the influx, and began to loose red-fletched arrows into the enemy force. Each draw of his bow sent a long, ash-wood arrow juddering into a Tilean body. He cut down six, enough for the wounded Galvin to barge and hack his way clear of the press of Murderers.
More arrows flew in. Bruda was kneeling on the roof lip of the hall itself, shooting down with her double-curved Kislev bow. Together, the two hawk-eyed archers slaughtered the milling Tileans. There was nowhere to run, no cover from the deadly hail, except back out through the fence. As the last few scratched and clawed their way out, leaving twelve dead or dying on the churned earth, Bruda and Gilead sent more shots into their backs too.
Once they were out of sight, Gilead dropped his bow and leapt down, drawing his gold-hilted sword. He raced to the breach and, with Galvin’s help, dragged a haycart in to cover it. Once she was sure no more Tileans would appear, Bruda also lowered her bow and vaulted down to help. The trio wrestled the cart into place, and then used a mattock to stake it firm with broken timbers from the wall. Better repairs would have to wait.
Galvin sat down suddenly, weak from blood loss. Apart from the quarrel wound, he had been gashed and sliced in a dozen places. He was splashed with gore from head to toe, but by no means was all of it his.
‘What can I do?’ he wheezed to the elf and the Kislevite.
‘Watch here,’ Bruda told him.
‘They may try again. Stay here, rest and watch the breach,’ Gilead agreed.
‘But I can’t just…’ Galvin began. He was swaying eccentrically, but the rolling roar of the main fight was too loud to ignore. ‘I must fight, for Sigmar’s sake! My village-‘
‘Then recover our arrows as you watch. We will need them later.’
Bruda quickly showed the ploughman how to use a short knife to cut out the arrows without breaking them.
GILEAD AND BRUDA returned to the fight, barely in time to lay in beside Nithrom and Madoc, who were being driven back by Tilean swordsmen.
‘Where’s Caerdrath?’ Gilead bellowed over the ring of steel and the hoarse yells of pain.
Nithrom glanced at him. Gilead did not know how the other elf had fallen, he realised.
Below, a horn sounded down the valley and drums rolled. The Tileans were signalled to fall back. Even the strongest assault can only maintain its impetus for so long without advantage - and all their advantages had been denied.
Maura’s Murderers broke off and fell back down the mound, many running in retreat, for they knew the embittered defenders would not let them leave unhindered. True enough, Bruda and Fithvael, and Dolph with a borrowed bow, fired on them as they ran, dropping half a dozen and wounding more. The inner ditch and the northern slope of the mound were littered with the southern raiders’ dead.
The defenders sagged almost as one, overcome with exhaustion. Most of the villagers who had fought fell, weeping or gasping for breath. Women, children and the elderly came gingerly out of the inner hall and the temple to tend those they could help.
Madoc found Erill and carried the lad into the hall. Erill was unconscious and the left part of his face was a bloody ruin.
Fithvael found Gilead standing silently over the mangled body of Caerdrath. Fithvael could feel the pain and anguish throbbing inside his old friend at the sight. It quite eclipsed even the pain Fithvael himself felt at the loss.
‘Gilead! Gilead!’ The voice rose above the moaning and the weeping, and the distant drums. But Gilead did not turn until Fithvael touched his arm. He swung around sharply, a tall, pale murderous figure in gore-flecked black mail, his eyes as blood-dark as his scarlet shoulder guards and cloak.
It was Gaude yelling. He was on the other side of the inner compound, by the shattered gate. Gilead strode over to him through the press of exhausted and injured townsfolk. Fithvael hurried a pace behind him.
As they approached him, Gaude said nothing more. He turned and looked at the trampled, blood-soaked ground - where Nithrom’s body lay.
Vintze knelt down beside the wrecked figure, cradling the elf’s head.
Nithrom looked as if he was asleep. A broken Tilean sword blade jutted out from between the ribs of his studded leather armour.
Now Fithvael felt a pang much deeper than he had at Caerdrath’s loss. Tears stung his eyes, hot and harsh. He looked around, and found they were all there: Cloden, Madoc, Harg, Bruda, the twins. Their eyes were all dimmed with grief. Bruda turned her face to the sky and began to whimper a Kislev prayer-hymn. Cloden spat on the ground, averted his eyes and shook his head sadly. Harg came forward and knelt with Vintze, meek and gentle as a child. Madoc was silent, like a statue. The twins, in unison, made the benediction sign of Sigmar.
‘How?’ Fithvael asked.
‘In the last moments,’ Gaude answered, quiet. ‘After the horn sounded, as they fell back. One of the last of them to run, the lieutenant, Fuentes, as I saw it.’
‘Fuentes!’ Gilead hissed the name.
The villagers were also grouping around now in a silent, disbelieving mass. Fithvael knew this was the worst possible outcome. For all they had done, for the incredible resistance they had put up to defeat the savage enemy, this tore the heart out of them all. Nithrom was their leader, their head. None had countenanced the possibility that he could ever fall, not his warrior band of friends and old comrades, not the villagers who had believed every last one of his rousing words. And not the two elves of Tor Anrok, last of their line, who saw him as a final link to their heritage.
Their morale had died with Nithrom.
The east wind rose and the already dark sky began to weep heavy rain. Down in the valley, the Tilean drams sounded again, and the returning mercenary troops began to reform in skirmish lines around the outer ditch. There were more than ten score still: cavalry, foot, archers, not to mention the gunnery teams on the north scarp.
‘We should reinforce the defences,’ Dolph said.
‘Rebuild what we can before they return,’ Brom finished.
‘To hell with that!’ Vintze snarled, laying down Nithrom’s head gently and getting to his feet. ‘It is over. We are done. Let’s get out, retreat before they can come upon us again. Grab what we can and break through the back of the mound’s fence. We can be down in the woods by night.’
‘All of us?’ Gaude asked bitterly. ‘Women and children? The old, the infirm, the wounded?’
‘We did what we could!’ Vintze cried, turning away. ‘We did more than anyone thought we would!’ With this, he cast a lingering, contemptuous look in Gilead’s direction. ‘But it is over now.’
‘We leave them?’ Gaude pressed.
Vintze shrugged. ‘They can come. Whatever they like.’
‘And be hunted down in yon woods by the Tilean dogs?’ asked Harg. Thou knows Maura won’t just let us ran, Vintze. He’ll come a hunting after’n.’
‘Without food, provisions, weary as we all are?’ Cloden finished the picture. ‘And them, supplied, eager for blood? Some of us might get away, the more able-bodied, perhaps. Those that can ride, or fight if they have to. Those who have made a career out of slipping away like a thief.’
Vintze took a step towards the Carroburger and then turned aside. ‘Damn you, Cloden!’
‘We stay. We fight. We finish this,’ Cloden said adamantly. ‘We-‘ He stopped himself short and turned to Gilead. ‘Forgive me, lord. I was forgetting my place. Nithrom named you his successor. I… am too used to being his second.’
Fithvael tensed. For a long moment he thought Gilead might not reply. The son of Lothain was an arrogant bastard at the best of times, but now, surrounded by the human chattel he despised, with Nithrom and Caerdrath dead… now would not be a good time to act true to nature, to damn and curse all, to despair and let the black moods overtake him as they had done all his life. But Gilead chose the moment to surprise his companion.
‘I am not offended, Cloden. Perhaps it is best if you carry on in the role you k
now.’
Cloden shook his head. ‘Nithrom named you. He did that for a reason. I owe Nithrom te tuin my life three times over in combat and as many times again in word, because I listened to him. Nithrom named you and that’s good enough for me.’
Gaude and Madoc both nodded. The twins did too.
‘Da,’ said Bruda.
‘Twas his will thee should lead,’ Harg agreed.
Gilead looked at Fithvael.
‘Do you have to ask, old friend?’ his old friend said.
Then Gilead’s eyes turned to Vintze. ‘And you?’
Vintze paused, then turned and grinned with a shrug. There was sadness in his face, but the grin was genuine, a scoundrel’s look, bright as a clean flame.
‘If all these idiots agree,’ he smiled.
Gilead turned and looked down the slope through the gateway. Maura’s regiment was drawing up behind the ditch. Gilead could see campfires. They would not be coming again until they’d had rest and food, but the cannonballs might.
‘Carry the dead in state and place them in the hall,’ said Gilead. ‘Then everyone into the scarcement. Their guns will speak again before the day is out. You, and you three-‘ he picked out some of the older children who had worked the blades with him. ‘Stand watch up here. Come to us if they fire their guns. I don’t want you out here then. But cry out if they move in again.’
Eager, the children ran to the gate.
‘What about the defences?’ Dolph and Brom asked in one voice.
‘There is no point in relying upon them any more. The dogs will break down whatever we build with their cannon. We need a better plan.’
THE SCARCEMENT WAS as dingy and foul as they remembered it. Now there were wounded down here too, whimpering and stinking the air with open wounds. Water and food was shared out, though the supplies were getting low. Fithvael did what he could for Erill. The lad was conscious again, his face wrapped in dressings.
‘A fine scar you will have,’ chuckled Fithvael as he wound the bandages off and applied herbal dressings to the wounds.
‘Caerdrath is dead. I saw it,’ the lad whispered.
‘I know.’
‘The women told me Nithrom fell too.’
‘It breaks my heart to say… but yes. He fell, and gave his life. Valiant to the end.’
‘Make me fit. Make me well enough to stand with you.’
‘You’ve got a bad wound, boy, and the eye, well, it-‘
Erill sat up smartly. ‘I don’t care. Make me fit enough to stand with you at the last. I need to do that. If I fall dead a moment after the last of us is conquered or the last of them flee, I don’t care a damn. I need to fight now, for my father’s sake.’
Fithvael paused. He realised that he had never understood why Erill was with them. The others, all old comrades of Nithrom, who’d fought and warred and drunk beside him, and all of whom owed him a battle debt or a blood-pledge. But this one? Fithvael had always assumed Erill was here because he was trying to make a career as a pay-sword and Nithrom had given him a chance.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Nithrom… was my father.’
Fithvael set down his herbs. Such a thing was not totally unheard of, in the tales, but still…
One of elf kind and a human female? It could explain the boy’s fragile looks and his graceful strength. In fact, now Fithvael saw it, he fancied he saw something new in the boy’s ancestry. And yet, was it truly possible for the races to mingle so?
‘How?’
‘I was raised in a village near Altdorf. My mother, always told me my father had died in an Empire war, drafted to the east. But when she died of the fever in my sixteenth summer, Nithrom came. He told me the truth. He provided for me.’
Fithvael sighed. He thought of Nithrom, out in the crude human world, building friendships, fighting wars, finding solace for his loneliness amongst the brief human kind. Nithrom had cast aside the old ways more surely and more completely than Fithvael and Gilead had ever managed. He had become part of what the humans innocently called the Old World, not some phantom watcher on the outskirts. He had lived his life, and raised this human boy to be a son to be proud of, however against the old ways it was.
Fithvael felt the deepest and most starkly hollow pain of his life. It took him moments to speak again. He busied himself in redressing the wound, and turned away from the sprawled boy on the cot, returning a moment later with Nithrom’s longsword.
‘Use it well, Erill te tuin,’ he said as he pressed it into the boy’s hands. Whether or not the lad’s tale was true or a mere fiction was irrelevant here, with all of them so close to losing everything.
‘I already have yours,’ whispered Erill, pointing to the shortsword Fithvael had lent him. ‘It felt right in my hands.’
‘So it should. And your… your father’s blade will feel righter. You will live, Erill. If you can stand, stand. If you can fight, fight. I will not stop you. You are owed it.’
‘SO, ARE WE sitting here and waiting for them to come?’ asked Bruda, sharpening her sword with a whetstone. Thanks to Galvin, her quiver - and Gilead’s too - was almost full again. Now the wounded ploughman was being tended in the back of the scarcement.
‘No,’ said Gilead. ‘Answer me this…’ He looked to them all, the remaining pay-swords sat or stood around him in the cellar. ‘How did they hurt us most?’
‘With thern blasted blades, damn you!’ Harg spat.
‘No, worst of all,’ the elf replied patiently. ‘What made us almost give up?’
Madoc made a sign. He tried to speak first, but his mouth clacked wordlessly. Remembering, he drew in the air with his index finger. The elven rune that was Nithrom’s initial.
‘Just so. They took our leader. For a while then, we were lost, on the point of defeat.’
‘Speaking of points,’ Vintze said coldly, ‘I’m sure you have one.’
‘I can see where he’s going,’ Gaude said.
‘And I,’ said Cloden.
‘Maura!’ said the twins together.
‘Maura the Murderer. Just so.’ Gilead smiled. It was not a comforting expression to see.
‘These filth have been driven at us time and again, and paid the price. Would they come on if there were no Great Murderer at their backs with a whip? If Maura were dead, what would they do? Attack? I don’t think so. They would give up and run.’
‘So,’ said Vintze getting up and sipping from a wineskin, ‘your plan is to kill Maura and destroy them at the head. Fine. Let’s go. Oh… just one more thing: how the hell do we do that?’
Gilead called the headman, Drunn, over to them. ‘How old is this place?’ he asked the drawn village elder.
‘Older than my memory or my family, lord,’ the man said.
‘The hall, the temple?’
‘Have been here years, generations, the town grew up around its skirts. My father’s father said that in his father’s mother’s time, or was it is his great uncle’s d-‘
‘It does not matter right at this moment.’
‘No, I’m sure it don’t. Anyway, this was once a noble’s manor, up here on the mound. Before it was a village, my folk said. The temple, that’s from then. The great hall’s newer, of course. The Big Winter Fire when my grand-grandfather was a youth razed it and they built another. Looks like we’ll have to do the same again, if we have the chance.’
‘And this cellar?’
‘Oh, that’s a relic from the old hall.’
‘And this?’ Gilead slid behind one of the big water vats and lifted a loose flag. There was a dark, oozing hole beneath it.
‘I never knew that was there!’ said Drunn, a startled look written upon his pale face.
‘How did you know?’ asked Fithvael.
‘I noticed it that first time we came down here. I was looking for it. Humans who build fortresses never leave themselves without a back door out.’
‘Wery impressive,’ murmured Bruda.
‘But how do yo
u know that?’ Fithvael pressed.
Gilead paused. ‘Nithrom told me.’ He coughed and continued. ‘Here is what we should do now: we climb down there, follow it out, we can come out of this mound without the Murderers knowing. That is how we get to Maura.’
‘But where does this thing go?’ asked Dolph.
‘Where does it come out?’ added Brom.
Gilead shrugged. ‘I do not know that. Away in the woods beyond the village, if this follows the usual way of things. My suggestion, if you are in agreement, is that we get someone who is used to slipping out of things to find out.’
Everyone turned to look at Vintze. He blinked and stood up, reaching for a lamp. ‘Oh, it’d be my absolute pleasure,’ he said dryly.
He lit the lamp and crossed to the hole without further protest. Gilead held his arms as he lowered himself into it.
Before he broke his grip, Gilead fixed the flax-haired Reikland thief with his eyes.
‘You do not want to dream about what will happen if you do not return.’
‘I know. Trust me, elf.’ He winked broadly. ‘Nithrom always did.’
JUST AFTER THE fourth hour of the afternoon, the Tileans resumed their cannonade. The children Gilead had set on watch felt the first impacts rather than saw them. Then spouts of liquid mud shot up from the silt-slope of the mound and they ran inside, yelling at the tops of their frightened voices.
The rain had not let up all afternoon. Now it was torrential and sheeting under the gusts of a blustering north wind. The sky was prematurely grey and opalescent. It seemed the rain showers were but the heralds of a worse storm to come.
Wet through and shivering, the children tumbled down into the deep scarcement, all screeching at once, but their noise needed no interpreter. All had felt the quaking of the mound.
Vintze had still not returned. Gilead sent Dolph and Brom slinking above to assess the shelling and to discern what they could of the enemy tactics. The storm was darkening the sky to night-pitch and distant lightning was licking the mountains far to the north. The Ostmarkers reported movement in the enemy camp, plainly some form of preparation, but nothing was yet moving their way except cannon-fire. That was, unless the Tileans were using some art of concealment or shrouding sorcery that even their sharp eyes could not make out.
