Dieter tried to call out for help, but it was too late. Trapped as surely as the scorpion under the weight of fallen stone, he lost consciousness.
“Damned lucky if you ask me,” a voice intruded into his black, dreamless sleep. “I’ve seen some foolish heroics in my time, but that was absolute madness.”
“I wonder,” a second voice said. “I don’t argue that it was foolish. But I suppose he knew what he was doing, after a fashion. He did grow up in a mill house, after all.”
“That’s as may be,” the first voice retorted. “But I’m guessing he never went out to collapse a mill wheel before. Assuming that’s what he went out to do, of course. I’m still not convinced the whole thing wasn’t just blind luck.”
“Who cares if it was?” a third voice joined the conversation. “It worked, didn’t it? Bravest thing I ever saw. I told you, right when I first introduced him to you, the lad has stones the size of a young bull’s.”
“Actually, I believe you only said that later,” the second voice disagreed. “When you first introduced us you said he was a dab hand with a sword, nothing else.”
Recognising the voices as belonging to Gerhardt, Rieger and Hoist, Dieter opened his eyes to find he was staring up at the sky. It was daylight and the sun was high overhead.
“Careful, lad,” Gerhardt said solicitously. “I wouldn’t try to move just yet.”
“What happened?” Turning his head to look around him, Dieter saw he was lying on a makeshift stretcher outside the mill house. He saw other wounded men around him, being tended to by their comrades. Looking further afield, he saw the courtyard of the mill was littered with goblin bodies.
“You were knocked about pretty bad when the mill wheel collapsed,” Gerhardt told him. “A broken timber fell on you. I’ve done my best to bind your ribs, but I think you’ve broken a couple of them. You’ll live, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are times over the next few days when you’ll wish you hadn’t. It’s always hard going when you’ve broken a rib. Even breathing hurts.”
“But, what happened to the goblins?” Finding his skull felt like it was filled with old rags, Dieter tried shaking his head to clear it. He quickly regretted it, as the movement caused a shiver of pain to run through his ribs.
“They fled,” Hoist said. “After the mill wheel collapsed, burying the scorpion and their chieftain, the goblins turned tail and ran. Of course, we did our best to make ’em pay for attacking this place. By the time the general got here it was all over, bar the mopping up.”
“The general?” Dieter looked at him quizzically. “What are you talking about?”
“Come and see,” Hoist said. Then, when he noticed Gerhardt glowering at him, he shrugged. “All right, I know you said he shouldn’t move. But it can’t hurt that much, not if he takes it slowly. And it stands to reason, he’ll want to know what’s going on. And, besides, good news makes a man heal more quickly - ask any surgeon.”
Despite further protestations from Gerhardt, Hoist and Rieger carefully helped Dieter to his feet. Supporting him between them, they began to lead him toward the mill gates. After they had gone about a dozen paces, Dieter had them pause for a few seconds so he could look around him.
Now he was up on his feet, he could see the dead scorpion buried beneath a mound of bricks and timbers, the shattered mill wheel lying on top of it. Glancing at the other wounded men nearby, a sudden thought occurred to him.
“How is Kuranski?” Dieter asked.
“He didn’t make it,” Gerhardt answered. “He died while the rest of us were fighting the goblins. We were going to bury him in a little while, along with the others.”
Gerhardt turned to gaze at some of the human bodies lying among the dead goblins littering the courtyard.
“We lost some good men last night,” he said. “We have to hope it was worth it - that, finally, things have turned the corner and we’re going to start winning this war.”
“They will do,” Hoist predicted confidently. “Now we’ve got Old Iron Britches leading us, everything will be better. Just you wait and see.”
“Iron Britches?” Dieter asked.
“Come on,” Hoist urged him forward. “I said we had something to show you.”
Leading him slowly to the open gates, the three men helped Dieter prop himself up alongside one of the gate posts. Hoist pointed to one of the areas of open ground on the other side of the mill’s walls.
Turning to look in the direction Hoist had indicated, Dieter saw a grey-haired man in full plate walking among the night goblin bodies lying outside the walls. The man looked to be about sixty years of age, with a grim, stoic countenance and his hair cut close to his scalp in a severe, military style. Half a dozen knights, also in full plate, walked beside the old man as an escort. Noticing that the knights wore the colours of the Count of Hochland’s personal livery emblazoned on their shields, Dieter’s breath caught in his throat.
“Is that him?” he asked the others. “Is it Count Aldebrand?”
“So speaks the bumpkin,” Hoist laughed and shook his head good-naturedly. “You can tell our poor country mouse here hasn’t spent much time in high society.”
“The Count is a considerably younger man,” Rieger said. “The man you see over there is His Excellency, General Ludwig von Grahl.”
“Old Iron Britches,” Hoist said. “That’s what his men call him. We must’ve served under him in a dozen campaigns. He’s beaten the greenskins in battle before. Not to mention the beastmen, the marauder hordes and the damn Ostlanders. The finest general ever to have led the armies of Hochland, that’s what they say about him. For myself, I believe it. Why, I remember at the Battle of Tannesfeld—”
“No doubt you saved his life,” Rieger cut him off before he could finish. “I couldn’t tell you whether he’s really the best general in Hochland, Dieter. But, I know this. I’ve served under von Grahl before, and he knows his business. I’d trust him with my life.”
“Aye, I see it the same,” Gerhardt nodded. “Von Grahl and his bodyguard arrived about an hour ago, alongside some outriders and a regiment-sized group of Kislevite horse archer mercenaries. Apparently, the General has been given command over every aspect of the province’s defence. From now on, we answer to him.”
Looking at the man, Dieter wondered whether the others were right about him. His comrades’ sense of joy and excitement now that General von Grahl was in command was readily apparent. Dieter wasn’t quite sure if he could see it himself. Von Grahl looked to be an ordinary enough fellow in the flesh. Yet, Dieter had to admit he had a certain something. The general had an aura about him, an air of strength and decisiveness.
When Dieter had briefly glimpsed the army’s original commander, General von Nieder, he had been struck by the fact the man looked like a tax collector. With General von Grahl it was different. There was no mistaking the fact that von Grahl was a soldier.
Perhaps it was another false dawn. But, for the first time in Dieter was not sure how long, he had the definite impression that things were looking up.
PART THREE
THE KILLING TIME
(Late Brauzeit—Early Kaldezeit)
From
The Testimony of General Ludwig von Grahl
(unexpurgated text):
…Once I arrived in the north, it became clear the task ahead was even more formidable than I had feared. The remnants of von Nieder’s army were spread over half the province. They were dispirited and tired men, many of whom had forgotten what it is to be a soldier. At the same time, the orcs were in complete ascendancy.
The one small factor in our favour was the fact that the orc army was likewise spread over a great distance. Apparently, it had proved beyond even Ironfang’s power to make sure his troops held their discipline for long. In the wake of victory, the greenskins had split back into their tribal groupings as they pursued the fleeing human forces. Naturally, being greenskins, some of these tribal groups had fallen to looting every human
habitation in their path, hampering their chieftain’s efforts to bring his army together so he could continue driving southwards. We even heard reports of greenskin tribes fighting amongst themselves as their natural animosity toward each other reasserted itself.
Thankfully, the enemy’s lack of discipline gave me valuable time to bring my own forces back into order. Gathering together the various bands of soldiers we met on the way north, I ordered my troops to press-gang every man they encountered who was capable of holding a weapon. From among the columns of weary refugees fleeing the orcs, we recruited thousands of such conscripts—many of them archers, already armed with the bows and arrows they used for hunting.
In the meantime, in the course of our journey northward, I had come to realise the wizard Emil Zauber had the potential to be a valuable ally. While most men are inclined to consult the Lore of the Heavens in the hope of divining their personal future, I am more interested in Zauber’s ability to predict the weather. During the long journey to the north, a plan began to form in my mind.
Sigmar willing, it may help swing the war in our favour…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE END OF A ROPE
“Erich von Nieder, you have been found guilty of crimes against your Count, your province and its people,” the sergeant intoned, squinting up at the man standing on the scaffold. “Your punishment has been decreed in accordance with army tradition and protocol. Do you have anything to say before the sentence is enacted?”
“Only that this is a travesty,” the former general replied, glaring down at his questioner. The rope had been fixed tight enough around his throat that he could only speak at the volume of a whisper. Despite this, he was defiant to the last. “I am innocent. And, even if I wasn’t, you have no power to judge me.”
Raising his eyes, von Nieder took in the situation around him. He was standing on a roughly fashioned wooden scaffold, beneath the branches of a broad elm destined to be the place of his death. His hands were tied behind him. Ahead of him several regiments of infantry had been drawn up in formation to watch his execution, while a number of the army’s knights and officers stood off to the side of the scaffold, among them the army’s new commander, General von Grahl.
Turning his head as far to the side as he could manage, von Nieder glared viperishly at a man he hated with a passion. Surrounded by his bodyguard and the officers of his staff, von Grahl met his gaze impassively. Still unable to raise his voice above a whisper, von Nieder uttered his final words before he faced eternity.
“I am of the nobility,” von Nieder said. He knew no one except perhaps the sergeant could hear him, but he spoke the words anyway, eager to leave some record—no matter how transient—of the injustice that had been foisted upon him. “By the ancient legal codes of the Empire I am guaranteed the right to a trial before my peers. The Count will not forgive you this breach of precedent, von Grahl. You can hang me now, but the Count will punish you for it. Mark my words. One day soon, you’ll kneel before the headsman’s axe and wish you had not done this thing.”
The sergeant waited until von Nieder had finished his speech. Then, he raised his hand. Three drummers stood nearby. At the sergeant’s signal, they began to beat a rolling rhythm.
“The sentence will be carried out,” the sergeant said. “May the Lord Sigmar have mercy on your soul.”
Von Nieder felt rough hands behind him. He was pushed from the scaffold.
“There’s something I never thought I’d see,” Hoist muttered. “A general being hanged. Granted, he probably deserves it. But, usually, if a general does something wrong, the worst punishment he can expect is being sent home in disgrace. The last thing you expect to see is them hanging a general. They save the hempen dance for our kind—for commoners, soldiers and other assorted undesirables.”
He was standing at attention in the front rank of the regiment, alongside Dieter, Gerhardt and Rieger. Half an hour earlier, the Scarlets had been summoned from their quarters along with several other regiments to bear witness to the death of the former general Erich von Nieder—once commander-in-chief of the armies of Hochland. For days, ever since von Nieder had been captured, rumours had run rife throughout the army that he had been sentenced to be hanged. No one had believed it, however—not until they were ordered to go and watch the execution.
The army was camped in the northern forests, a few leagues west of the mill house where Dieter and the others had made their stand against the night goblin army. In the wake of General von Grahl’s arrival on the scene, it seemed to Dieter that everything had changed.
The last month had passed almost as a blur, as von Grahl assembled a new army made up of a mixture of old regiments like the Scarlets and new regiments recently constituted via a province-wide muster. Many of the newly-mustered regiments were still being equipped and trained further south, but General von Grahl had managed to acquire enough men to bolster his army—even if the majority of the new recruits had yet to see any action.
“I can’t believe how small and fragile he looks,” Dieter said, staring at the man standing on the scaffold. “I mean, I know he’s an old man. But, it’s the first time I’ve seen General von Nieder up close. I suppose I expected him to bigger.”
“Ex-general,” Rieger reminded him. “And, as for hanging him, I hear it’s because when the scouts found him von Nieder was carrying over a dozen bags of gold with him. Apparently, when the orcs overran us back in Erntezeit, von Nieder decided to loot the army’s pay chest before he escaped. They think he was trying to cross the border into Ostland when the scouts found him. He probably hoped to live out his remaining years in luxury while his soldiers were busy running for their lives from the orcs. You ask me, hanging is almost too good for him.”
There was a vengeful tone to Rieger’s voice. Usually, Rieger was inclined to sarcasm rather than anger, but in the case of von Nieder he seemed to view the man’s behaviour as almost a personal affront. Dieter had heard whispers that Rieger had once trained to become a priest before he fell under the spell of the hellfire and brimstone sermons of men like Luther Huss. Disgusted by the corruption and venality of the priests he saw around him, Rieger had decided on the life of a simple soldier, hoping to find inner peace in the task of fighting Sigmar’s enemies.
“Yes, well, everyone has heard that,” Hoist snorted. “That rumour has been through the camp like the Bretonnian Two-Step. If you want my opinion, I’d say Old Iron Britches has decided to hang von Nieder to make an example of him. It’s always the way when you get a new general—he wants to hang a few men just so the rest of the army know he’s not a man to be trifled with. Although, admittedly, I’ve never heard of a general hanging another general before. You think he’d be worried he’s setting a precedent.”
“Quiet all of you,” Gerhardt said, his voice sounding a warning note. “A man is about to die. He was a soldier—even if he wasn’t a very good one. Show some respect.”
The drummers standing by the scaffold had begun to beat a rhythm. Watching with the others, Dieter saw two men step up quietly behind the scaffold. They wore black hoods to cover their faces. Dieter had heard the two executioners had been chosen randomly by lot—the hoods were to conceal their identities from the rest of the army and save them from retribution from anyone who might have held a good opinion of the man they were about to kill.
With a shiver, it occurred to Dieter he himself might have been chosen for that unpleasant duty—as could any man. It was a nasty thought. It was one thing to be called upon to kill a man in battle, quite another to administer his execution.
There but for the grace of Sigmar, thought Dieter. He shivered again.
There was no trapdoor in the scaffold von Nieder stood on, that particular device having proven beyond the wit of the army’s carpenters. Instead, his executioners moved behind him and simply pushed him from the scaffold.
Von Nieder’s fall was broken with a jerk as he reached the end of the rope. His legs flailed beneath him as his body
swayed back and forth under the elm. Watching the man’s struggles, Dieter felt sick to his stomach. He had never seen a man hanged before. He was struck by the cruelty of it. Even as he watched, the former general’s struggles seemed to grow more frantic, more desperate.
“Sweet Sigmar,” Hoist breathed, making the sign of the hammer. “They didn’t give him enough rope to break his neck. The poor bastard’s strangling to death.”
As von Nieder’s body continued to sway under the elm with his legs kicking wildly beneath him, the two executioners looked at each other as though uncertain as to their next move.
After a pregnant pause, one of the hooded men jumped down from the scaffold and advanced on the hanging man. He turned to look toward the watching General von Grahl as though asking his permission. Then, at a nod from von Grahl, he grabbed hold of von Nieder’s wildly flailing legs and pulled down hard on them, trying to add his weight to the load on the hanged man’s neck in the hope it would end the matter more quickly.
Realising his comrade’s aim, the second executioner leapt down to join him. Together, they pulled down on von Nieder’s body. Slowly, the hanged man’s struggles subsided. With the combined weight of the executioners added to the task, it ended quickly. Von Nieder’s neck broke with an audible snap. With a last forlorn twitch, the body stopped moving.
“A bad business,” Hoist said, once it was over. “That’s the problem when you have men draw lots to decide who will be hangman. You never know whether the men who are picked have any idea of what they are doing. I’ve always said, if ever I found myself scheduled to die on the gallows, I’d bribe the gaolers to give me some weirdroot or mandrake. At least that way, you wouldn’t suffer.”
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