The sword flew from Reinmar’s hand and he just had time to think, as he was taken off his feet, that when he landed—flat on his back—he would be wide open to attack by a plunging dagger or flashing teeth. It would be even worse for him if he struck his head and was knocked unconscious.
Perhaps he had enough presence of mind to react to this awareness, or perhaps it was only blind luck, but in the end he fell upon his shoulders, without whacking the back of his head against the ground. He was indeed wide open to attack, but he did not lose consciousness. He retained full possession of his faculties.
He saw a beastman make as if to fall upon him, and for a split second thought he was doomed—but Sigurd was well aware of the fact that he had just knocked over the man to whom his safety had been entrusted, and the good servant was not about to let his mistake become fatal. As the beastman leapt, Sigurd’s arm lashed out in a great horizontal arc, the palm of his hand held flat—and as it impacted with the beast-man’s neck Reinmar heard the snap that broke the creature’s spine.
And as soon as that, it was over.
Suddenly, there were no more enemies to fight. No more beastmen were leaping forward with murderous intent. Save for the one that had just fallen and would never rise again, all eight or nine of them were in full flight, scattering in every direction. They had been eager to fight three men, though two of them had swords, but they were not willing to face three and one fallen if one of the unfallen were Sigurd.
But it was not a victory. Although none of the cart’s defenders had been seriously wounded, and all were now ready to renew the fight if necessary, they were stranded. The horses had run off into the driving rain, and the wagon had taken such a battering that it would be a virtual miracle if it were still road-worthy. It would almost certainly require repair, and the horses would require recapture—which could not be achieved without dividing the party.
Now there was no possible room for doubt that there were monsters abroad in the hills; for once, the rumours were true. Had Reinmar’s world not turned upside-down already, it would have turned upside-down then—but as things were, he felt grimly unastonished. He had set out on this expedition determined to make discoveries of his own, and he had made them. He suspected that he now knew more than any of his companions, including Vaedecker, about what was happening and what it might signify. He was proud of that, and firmly intent on keeping the advantage.
“Why did they attack us?” Ulick asked. The question presumably sounded more innocent to Sergeant Vaedecker than it did to Reinmar, given that Vaedecker had not been party to their earlier conversation.
“They didn’t,” Vaedecker said, scowling as he used the toe of his boot to turn over the second of the two monsters that Sigurd had killed. “Strictly speaking, we attacked them. They must have taken shelter in the wood when the rain began—and then we came along, driving at them like madmen. If I hadn’t fired that first bolt, they might have run away without a fight but once I’d killed one, they had to react. So we had to kill two more, and leave at least three wounded. Now, they’ll either be too terrified to come within half a mile of us, or so angry that they’ll be after our blood with real determination. We’ll have to hope for the first. The real question is: why are they here? I take it that the woods in these parts aren’t normally home to packs of beastmen.”
“No,” said Reinmar. “They aren’t.”
“You may not have liked the idea of rough soldiers coming to your nice, prosperous little town, Master Reinmar,” Vaedecker said, with a certain relish, “but I’ve got a shrewd suspicion that you’ll soon be grateful that we came. I think we’re going to be needed. This expedition is hereby cut short—we return direct to Eilhart as soon as we can. But first, we have to get the horses back.”
“And the wagon fixed,” Reinmar said. “Let’s hope Godrich is well enough to lend a hand—he’s the only one with the knowledge and the skill to get it moving again.”
“But first we need the horses,” Vaedecker insisted. “We need to get to them before the beastmen do, and we need to get them back here safely. Sigurd!”
The giant was not supposed to be taking orders from the soldier, but he did not so much as glance in Reinmar’s direction for confirmation. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll go. You’ll have to guard the wagon.”
Reinmar knew that Sigurd didn’t really mean “the wagon’. He meant that he was trusting Vaedecker to look after his master, and his master’s other servant.
“Take the boy,” Vaedecker commanded. “You might need more than one pair of hands.”
Ulick was under no one’s orders, and Reinmar expected him to protest that he had to stay with his sister, but in fact the boy nodded meekly. He too appreciated the need to regather what they needed with the maximum possible speed, before the beastmen could regroup and plan another attack.
Sigurd immediately strode off in the direction which the horses had followed, with the gypsy boy hurrying after him.
“What do we do about that?” Reinmar asked, pointing to the beastman whose neck had been broken.
“Nothing,” Vaedecker replied. “The one we have to attend to is Godrich. As you say, he’s the one whose knowledge and skill will allow us to patch up the wagon, if it can be patched at all.”
As if the bleakness of his tone had not lent a keen enough edge to the import of his words, lightning flashed upon the mountain peaks far to the south, then flashed again and again as a whole chain of strikes extended across the range. The sky was filled with the crackle of distant thunder, and when it finally died away the steady hiss of the rain that fell all about them seemed twice as loud as it had before.
“This is it, Reinmar,” Matthias Vaedecker said. “This is where it begins.”
“Where what begins?” Reinmar wanted to know.
“Reality,” the sergeant retorted. “The dream is dissolving, and the nightmare is free. This is when you begin to find out what the world is really like.”
Chapter Twelve
The storm clouds had already blown over, and the rain had ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but thick cloud still lay across the southern half of the sky. The sun’s light was beginning its slow fade towards darkness.
When Reinmar and Vaedecker had sheathed their blades and toiled back to the cart they found Godrich sitting up and nursing his head between his hands. He seemed very groggy, but when Reinmar scrambled back on to the wooden boards he roused himself and said: “It’s just a bump on the head and a twisted ankle. I’ll live.” He was already looking about him, his careful eye judging the extent of the damage that the cart and its cargo had sustained. Appearances were not encouraging, although the steward’s expression suggested that he had feared worse.
“Where’s the girl?” Vaedecker demanded, suddenly.
Reinmar was surprised by the urgency in the sergeant’s tone. He had not thought the soldier to be a caring man.
Godrich looked around, uncertainly, while Vaedecker snatched up the cloak under which the gypsy girl had been huddling, shaking it as if she might somehow have slipped into its lining. It was Reinmar who spotted her, already fifty or sixty paces away from the wagon—and he would have lost her in the trees had he not caught that brief glimpse.
“There!” he said, pointing.
Marcilla vanished almost as soon as he spoke, but Reinmar had time to notice that she was walking with a sureness of step that seemed unnaturally mechanical and measured, as if she were in some kind of trance.
Vaedecker cursed, almost as volubly as he had during the fight.
“Mind the cart well, steward,” he growled, although Reinmar formed the impression that he did not care overmuch at that point in time whether the cart was minded carefully or not. “Come on, Reinmar.”
Reinmar was surprised, but he obeyed readily enough, jumping down behind the sergeant and moving off in the direction the girl had taken—which was at a right angle to that in which the horses had fled. He had gone a dozen paces before he realised that the so
ldier was not in the least concerned for the girl’s welfare. Vaedecker was following her because he had heard the word “call” in her delirium, and knew what significance that word might have in the context of his spying mission.
They did not catch sight of her again as soon as they might have expected, and they drew apart by slow degrees so that they could cover more ground, although the sergeant called out a warning lest they lose sight of one another entirely.
By the time he caught another glimpse of the slim figure as it went gliding between the trees, Reinmar was beginning to wonder whether he would be able to find his way back to the cart. It was impossible to stick to a straight course while moving among thickets and fallen logs, and he was no longer sure of his exact heading—but Marcilla seemed certain enough of hers, and she kept on going, heedless of any threat which might be posed by inhuman creatures of any kind.
Reinmar had never had any particular fear of the forests that decked the foothills of the Grey Mountains, although they could be dismal and ominously quiet. He had slept beneath the trees on previous expeditions that he had made with his father, and would not have hesitated to do it again on this trip had it been necessary, even in this relatively gloomy region which he did not know well—but now that he knew that there really were monsters in the hills, every step that separated him from the cart seemed a step into the dangerous unknown.
Oddly enough, however, Reinmar feared more for Marcilla than he did for himself. The gypsy girl must have slept rough far more often than he, in far worse places than this. But she was ill now, and wet through in spite of the cloak he had draped over her sleeping body. While she was entranced she might easily step into a ditch and take a heavy fall, and would not be able to raise the slightest defence against a beastman. The ground over which they were walking was very uneven.
It was not until Vaedecker shouted “Hulloa!” that Reinmar realised that they had lost sight of one another—but when he replied they were able to reset their paces instantly on a convergent course.
The sound of Reinmar’s answering call seemed to rouse Marcilla slightly from her waking dream. She paused for a fraction of a second, but she did not look back. Whatever force held her seemed to tighten its grip in response to her hesitation, refusing to release her. Blurred echoes of the two shouts lingered in the air for a second or two, as if Vaedecker had been answered by a dozen distant voices emanating from the darkest part of the forest, away to the south-east.
They were now no more than fifteen paces behind Marcilla. There was no further danger of losing her, but still Reinmar hurried on in order to catch up. Vaedecker matched him stride for stride.
Reinmar called out again, this time addressing himself directly to the girl—but the only answer he received was from the eerie echoes. He hurried forward even faster and soon drew level with the gypsy, but Vaedecker hissed a warning at him.
“Don’t touch her!” the sergeant said. “Let her go where she will—and let her take us with her.”
The instruction banished any last lingering doubt that Reinmar might have entertained as to the sergeant’s purpose. One way or another, Machar von Spurzheim had discovered the little that Luther Wieland knew about the source of the dark wine, and his sergeant was not about to pass up the stroke of good fortune that had delivered Marcilla into his care at exactly the right moment. This was his mission, and he had an unexpected opportunity to complete it. It was not, of course, Reinmar’s mission, and Reinmar knew full well what Gottfried would say, if and when he heard that his son had gone haring off into the forest after a sleepwalking gypsy instead of remaining with his cargo, but he put the thought aside. He had taken the girl under his protective wing, and he was determined to protect her. He could not leave her to wander the forest alone, or with none to look after her but a soldier intent on using her as a guide to a secret place.
In any case, Reinmar’s own curiosity had been excited by tales of the wine of dreams. What would Luther or Albrecht have given, he wondered, for the chance that had casually been thrown into his lap? How many expeditions of this kind must Luther have undertaken in his youth, without ever experiencing such an outrageous stroke of luck?
Reinmar had drawn level with Marcilla again, and he could see the expression on her face. He had expected it to be blank, but it was not. He saw that the girl seemed deeply anxious and agitated, as if lost in an inner turmoil she could not dispel.
“Don’t touch her,” Vaedecker warned him, again. “Whatever troubles her, it is but a dream.”
“We don’t know that,” Reinmar muttered—but he kept his hands by his sides.
“Where are we going, Master Wieland?” the sergeant asked him. “You know these parts better than I. What lies beyond this wood?”
Reinmar looked about him, although he knew full well that he had not the slightest chance of catching sight of a landmark he knew. They were travelling roughly east-southeast, and they were travelling uphill, but he had no notion at all of what might lie in that direction or what might lie beyond the ridge that they would presumably attain in due course.
“I have no idea,” Reinmar confessed. “I dare say that there are farms and hamlets hereabouts which have no access for carts. The ground is too uneven to permit the building of roads. Even a man on horseback would have great difficulty following deer-trails through a wood of this kind. This is territory for walkers, and any produce brought out of it must take a long and winding course to anything remotely resembling a market. Have you seen any sign of human habitation since we left the cart—the markings of a woodcutter’s axe, or a hunter’s snare?”
“None,” the soldier admitted. “But the road cannot be much more than a few hundred paces away, and this is habitable land—or would be, were there not half-human monsters lurking in its coverts.”
“What are we to do when night falls?” Reinmar asked him, tacitly accepting the fact that they would follow the girl wherever she led for as long as it took, leaving the cart and its cargo to the protection of Godrich and Sigurd. “We have no lantern. Without our packs, in fact, we have nothing but the contents of our pouches, our blades and our sodden clothing—and yours, if you’ll forgive the observation, is distinctly malodorous.”
“The least the rain might have done for our cause was to wash the beastman’s stink away,” Vaedecker agreed, glumly. “But we’ve a while till the twilight fades, and no matter what magic may be guiding her steps, the girl still needs her eyes to tell her where to place her feet. If she doesn’t get to where she’s going before darkness falls, she’ll have to stop and wait.”
Silence fell while they trudged on for a while, but the agitation within Marcilla’s half-eclipsed soul was beginning to communicate itself to Reinmar, and he did not want to be left at the mercy of its horrid uncertainties.
“Why did you instruct me to come with you?” he asked the soldier. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”
“Why did you come?” Vaedecker countered. “I know you don’t trust me.”
Reinmar was slightly taken aback by the question, because he was genuinely uncertain of the answer. In the end, he said: “I did not want the girl to come to harm. Not from any source.”
Vaedecker laughed dryly, “young men fall in love too easily,” he observed. “Show them a pretty face and a helpless form, and they’re lost. Still, better that than the lure of the dark wine. I’d rather you were here as a hero than a merchant—but whatever your reason, I’d rather have you under my eye. I’m a soldier, not a fool; if this mysterious source is protected by monsters which hunt in packs, I’d far rather that I didn’t have to face them without a friend to guard my back.”
“A friend?” Reinmar echoed.
“Are we not friends, Master Wieland? We did not wake as friends this morning, I suppose, but we stood side by side to fight monsters this afternoon. We’ve a basis for friendship now, have we not?”
“I suppose we have,” Reinmar granted, although he knew that Vaedecker must have reasons of his o
wn for making the claim.
They were still heading upslope, with no sign of a ridge before them—but the trees grew much taller hereabouts, with higher and more elaborate crowns. A few of the conifers typical of the wider region could still be seen, but the dominant vegetation hereabouts was deciduous and the leaves had already begun to yellow on the branches. The ferny undergrowth was nourished by a rich leaf-humus, which enabled the curling fern-leaves to grow man-high, but the going was not so very difficult.
Reinmar realised that the trees between which they passed must be very old. They had held dominion here for so long that not a single sapling had found space to grow up for thirty years or more. The woods beside the roads were extensively worked by fellers and coppicers, and always had young growth mingled with old, but this was obviously a place where few men ever came, and to which none brought axes.
Marcilla’s stride had begun to falter, not through any loss of resolution but because she was near exhaustion. She had not taken a drink since the rain had wet her lips, and she had not eaten for far too long. The blow to her head had taken a great deal out of her.
While Reinmar hesitated, uncertain as to whether to take a hand, she stumbled—and would have fallen had he not then stepped swiftly forward to catch her.
He would have helped to ease her back into her stride if he could, but as soon as her progress was interrupted she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had snapped. He found himself holding her up, cradled in his arms. She was fast asleep, but still dreaming. Her eyes still moved behind closed lids, and her expression was by no means serene.
Vaedecker cursed yet again.
“What now?” Reinmar asked. “Do we wait until morning? We have neither food nor water to help her regain her strength. She might have recovered if she’d stayed with the cart, but she’s much worse now.”
“The call she has heard cannot make concessions to her condition,” the soldier muttered. “The magic, if magic it is, cannot know or care that she had been hit over the head and knocked silly. If we were not here, she’d probably lie down and die, but since you’re here to carry her there’s still a chance that she might live. Let’s hold her course while we can, at least until we reach the top of this cursed slope. Once at the top, I’ll climb into the crown of one of these wooden giants, to see how the land lies ahead.”
[Warhammer] - The Wine of Dreams Page 11
