by Warhammer
Behind them, Reidle took his horses from Ortwin and did his best to calm them, whispering, ‘There now, Bess. Nothing to be afraid of,’ and, ‘Here, Pommertz, who’s a brave boy then.’
For a moment, his murmurs and the shifting of the horses and the harsh breathing of the men was all that could be heard. The silence was unnerving. Felix and the others stared into the murk of shadows under the trees, their breath trailing away in steaming clouds, waiting for Sigmar only knew what. The tension made Felix grind his teeth.
‘Which way are they coming from?’ murmured Ortwin, adjusting a helmet that looked too big for him.
‘Where are they?’ asked one of the guards.
‘Maybe the horses only spooked themselves,’ said another.
‘Silence,’ said Sir Teobalt. ‘Be ready.’ A fine old long sword gleamed in his hand.
‘Be ready for what?’ asked one of the guards querulously.
He was cut off by a bloodcurdling roar from the woods to their left. Everyone jumped. The horses screamed and tore from Reidle’s grasp.
‘Steady!’ cried Sir Teobalt.
With a thunder of hooves, the woods erupted with nightmares made flesh. Felix froze, terror gripping his heart. He had faced them before, but no amount of familiarity could breed contempt for such monsters. Five towering goat-legged, goat-headed monsters led the charge – two to the left of the carts, three on the right – followed by a swarm of smaller, more human horrors, mutated men with short, budding horns and mouths full of filed teeth. The behemoths rushed in, bellowing, their powerful limbs swinging huge spiked clubs and massive iron maces. Their smaller, scrawnier followers spread out behind them, knives and sickles and clubs clutched in their twisted claws.
Two of Reidle’s guards died instantly, bodies pulped by a single swing of a beastman’s mace. Gotrek leapt forwards before the monster had finished its swing and buried his axe in its stomach. He tore it out again with a spray of blood and was on the next before the first had begun to topple.
Teobalt strode out to meet another of the leaders, crying, ‘To me, foul beast! Come face Sigmar’s wrath!’
The beastman swung at him with a club that looked like a giant’s femur, and Teobalt took it on his shield. The force of it slammed the old knight to the ground and the beast trampled over him and leapt at Reidle’s horses, ripping old Bess’s throat out with its teeth as the merchant fell back, screaming and throwing up his arms.
A beastman with a third horn sprouting from its forehead charged Felix. He flinched away from its gore-matted mace and crashed against Teobalt’s cart to fall in the mud again. Three-Horn came on. Felix backhanded desperately with Karaghul and rolled under the cart as the beastman’s sticky mace crashed down, splintering the planks of the cart. Felix hunched down, then lashed out from under the tailgate, hacking at the beastman’s backward-bending legs. It jumped back.
All around, Felix could hear the screams of men and horses and the roaring cries of the beastmen and their followers. Quick glances showed him flashes of violence in every direction – the two remaining guards fighting for their lives in the midst of a handful of the lesser beasts, Teobalt’s warhorse kicking the brains out of another, a lesser beast on the ale wagon, hacking at the straps that held the barrels tight, Gotrek exchanging clanging blows with a beastman three times his height, Reidle the merchant crawling on his belly, weeping like a baby, Ortwin slashing wildly at a pair of beast-followers as he tried to reach Sir Teobalt, who fought the beastman that had trampled him.
Then, with almost human screams, Teobalt’s carthorses bolted as a pair of the scrawny beastlings leapt on their backs. With the horses went the cart, leaving Felix exposed again. The three-horned beastman loomed above him, swinging down with its mace. Felix rolled to the side and felt the ground shake as the massive iron weapon slammed down beside him. He jumped to his feet, slashing blindly around at the beastman’s encroaching followers. The smell of them was overpowering. They reeked like a sewer full of dead dogs.
The three-horned beastman leapt at him again, swinging for his head. Felix ducked and lunged, stabbing forwards with all his might. Karaghul’s point skidded across the beast’s massive belly shield and punched through its ribs.
The monster howled and wrenched away violently. Felix held on, but could not pull his sword loose. Enraged and in pain, the beastman swung down at him. Felix let go of his sword and jumped back, slamming into a lesser beast who was trying to brain him from behind.
He grabbed the thing by its stubby horns and threw it in front of him. The three-horned beastman’s mace crushed it, and it slumped to the ground like a bag of wet meat.
Three-Horn came on. Felix turned to run and found himself surrounded by its followers, all closing in on him. A sword! He needed a sword. One of the dead guards held on to one. Felix rolled to him, ducking a handful of attacks, ripped it from the guard’s slack hand and lashed out all around. The lesser beasts dodged back then advanced again. There seemed no escape. Or was there?
Screaming he knew not what, Felix charged a man-beast that was between him and the ale wagon. The thing leapt aside and Felix sprang up onto the cart, kicking down the hideous thing that had been cutting at the leather straps. He climbed to the top of the barrels and turned to face his pursuers.
‘Now try me!’ he cried, triumphant.
The three-horned beastman slammed its mace into the cart so hard that it jumped. Felix staggered and almost lost his footing. His skinny followers started to climb the sides. Perhaps this hadn’t been Felix’s best idea.
A quick glance around told him that the rest of the wagon train was faring no better. Sir Teobalt and the beastman he had fought were both down, while Ortwin stood over the old knight’s body, fighting a handful of lesser beasts. Only one of the guards remained standing, backed up by two more beastlings, and Reidle lay unmoving on the ground next to the ale cart. Only Gotrek was master of his situation, beating back his monstrous opponent with blow after blow.
Felix hacked at a climbing man-beast with his borrowed sword and bit deep into its shoulder. It screamed and fell off. But then Three-Horn swung again and Felix had to leap up to let the mace pass under his feet.
He knew before he landed that it would go wrong. His boot heels slipped on the curve of the barrel and he bounced down the side of the pyramid, knocking the wind from his lungs, and just barely catching himself at the wagon’s rail.
The lesser beasts converged towards him, cackling. He kicked one in the chops and lashed out at another, but he was so precariously balanced that if he tried to move more than that he would fall between the barrels and the rail of the cart and be wedged tight.
The three-horned beastman pushed through its followers, Karaghul still sticking out of its ribs. Felix scrambled for purchase on the barrels and could find none. Behind Three-Horn he saw Gotrek running to help Ortwin. Couldn’t the damn fool dwarf see that his old friend was in trouble?
‘Gotrek! Help!’ he called, but he was too winded, and it came out as a whisper. As Three-Horn loomed over him, raising its mace, Felix held up his short sword, knowing it would be like trying to stop an avalanche with a twig.
But then, as he waited cringing for the blow to fall, the beastman bellowed and arched its back in pain. Felix blinked. Karaghul was sticking from Three-Horn’s ribs right in front of him. It was like the beastman was offering it to him.
Felix reached forwards with both hands and wrenched with all his might. The blade came free, causing the beastman to howl even louder. It also threw Felix’s balance off, and he fell, just as he had feared, on his back between the barrels and the cart rail. He was trapped.
Three-Horn roared above him, blood flowing down its furred side like a river as it raised its mace once again. Felix did the only thing he could do, and thrust up fast and hard with Karaghul, aiming as best he could. The blade punched into the flesh below Three-Horn’s lowest rib and sank deep.
With a whistling sigh, the beastman staggered sideways, its knees b
uckling. The bloody rent in its flesh ripped wider as its weight dragged at the sword, and its guts spilled out and slapped against its belt. It twisted as it fell, and Felix saw something thin and white sticking out of its back – an arrow!
Felix clawed at the rail, struggling up out of the confining space and looking around. The man-beasts that had been climbing the ale cart were on the ground, all writhing with arrows in their backs and necks.
As he turned towards Ortwin and Gotrek, he saw them cutting down the lesser beasts around them, half of which were also impaled with arrows, and as he watched, another arrow shot from the woods to the left and pierced the leg of one of the three beastlings fighting the last standing guard. The man killed it as it lost its balance, then turned on the others.
Felix vaulted the cart rail and ran to help him, but the lesser beastmen, seeing him coming, turned and fled for the woods – straight for where the arrows had come from. A third beastling picked itself up and joined them, squealing in fright.
Felix and the last guard started after them, but before they could take two steps, another arrow shot from the trees and took one of the man-beasts in the eye, dropping it. The other two kept running for the trees.
With a wail like a banshee, the hidden archer burst from the underbrush with a long, narrow-headed hatchet in each hand. He was small and quick and bundled in filthy furs, and ran straight at the escaping beastlings. They dodged right and left, too panicked to fight, but the archer side-armed one of the hatchets at the one on the left, then leapt at the one on the right. The thrown axe spun in a perfect arc and split the forehead of the left-hand man-beast. At the same time the archer kicked the right-hand monster full in the face with both feet, knocking it flat, then landed, turned and buried the second hatchet in its chest. The man-beast shrieked and tried to sit up, but the archer stomped on its throat and levered the axe free, then stepped back and let out a sigh of relief.
Felix looked around in the sudden silence. All the beastmen and their lesser followers were dead or fled, and he and at least some of the others still lived. Such an outcome hadn’t seemed possible a moment ago. They had the archer to thank for that.
He and Gotrek started towards the figure as Ortwin knelt beside the fallen templar.
‘Nice shooting,’ said Gotrek.
‘Thank you for the help,’ added Felix.
The archer stood from prying the second axe from the other beastling and flipped back dirty, matted hair to peer at them. Felix stopped short, surprised.
Though she was bundled in thick leather armour and furs, with a scarf up to her narrow chin against the cold, and though her face was mottled with grime and scarred from hairline to the corner of her full lips on her left side, there was no mistaking the archer’s sex at close range. Her fierce brown eyes flashed keenly under her unruly mass of hair, which was all black but for a lock over her left eye that was as white as snow. ‘I… I have sworn an oath to…’ Her words faded away as she looked closely at Gotrek for the first time.
‘You,’ she said, staring.
She turned and looked at Felix. ‘And you!’
Felix exchanged a puzzled glance with Gotrek. Gotrek shrugged. He didn’t know her either.
Suddenly the filthy girl fell to her knees before them. She grabbed Felix’s hand and kissed it.
‘My heroes!’ she said.
FOUR
Felix stared down at the young woman as she covered his hand with kisses. He felt slightly dizzy. First Ortwin and now this strange forest creature. Had everyone read his books? Was he truly this famous?
‘So… so you’ve read them too?’ he asked.
She looked up at him curiously. ‘Read? Read what?’
‘My books,’ he said. ‘You’ve read my books.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how to read.’
Felix felt even dizzier. ‘Then how… uh, that is, why are we your heroes?’
She blinked, confused. ‘You… But, I’m Kat. Katerina. You rescued me from the beastmen. You rescued me from… that woman.’
Felix looked at Gotrek again. The Slayer shrugged.
‘We… we did?’
‘Yes!’ said the archer, a slight edge of desperation creeping into her voice. ‘In Flensburg! It is because of you that I have become a Slayer of beasts!’ She looked worried now. ‘You… you don’t remember?’
Suddenly, with a flood of images and emotions, he did remember. The massacred village. The frightened little girl, hiding in the ruins of the inn. The desperate fight with the beastmen in the woods. The defence of Flensburg. The hideous strength of the woman with the white streak in her hair as she closed her hand around his throat. The little girl again, her eyes wide as she held the sword that had killed the woman, then once more as she begged and pleaded with Felix and Gotrek to take her with them, and then hugged them goodbye.
‘You,’ he said.
‘You,’ said Gotrek, and an uncharacteristic smile cracked his hard expression. ‘You seem to have become a hero yourself, little one.’
Kat flushed at that, though it barely showed through the patina of dirt on her cheeks. ‘I have vowed to rid all of the Drakwald of beastmen,’ she said into her scarf.
‘A noble ambition,’ said Felix, his mind still reeling. ‘I… I can’t believe, after all this time…’
‘Friends!’ came Ortwin’s voice from behind them. ‘Help me. Sir Teobalt is sorely wounded.’
They turned. Ortwin was still kneeling by the old knight, who lay flat on the ground. Gotrek and Felix hurried towards them, Kat tailing behind.
On the way, Felix looked around at the aftermath of the battle and totalled the cost. Two guards dead and the other two wounded, one so badly he couldn’t stand. Both of the ale cart horses mauled to death. Sir Teobalt’s cart wedged between two trees, its wheels smashed and its horses missing. Ortwin’s pony dead with its skull caved in, and Sir Teobalt’s charger pacing nervously nearby with deep claw marks in its flanks. It occurred to Felix that if the beastmen hadn’t been so hungry for horseflesh the battle might have gone much worse. At least the beer had been saved – and the beer merchant, it seemed, for Herr Reidle was groaning to his feet behind his wagon and peering around anxiously.
Sir Teobalt looked up as they gathered around him. He had a deep gash across one cheek where the edge of his helmet had cut him, and his armour was covered in dents. ‘Right glad I am to see you alive, friends,’ he said feebly. ‘Valiantly fought.’
‘How badly are you hurt, sir?’ asked Felix, kneeling beside him.
‘Mere inconveniences,’ he said. ‘My shoulder took a heavy blow, and I cannot at the moment move my left leg. Also, my vision is blurred. I fear I will need some rest.’
Felix turned to Kat. ‘Do you know how far it is to Bauholz?’
‘About an hour’s walk,’ she said. ‘No more than two.’
Felix looked up at the few patches of purple sky that showed through the thick canopy of needles above them. ‘Perhaps we should camp–’ he began, but Kat cut him off.
‘You must not stay here tonight. There are wolves and other beasts that will smell the blood. You will get no peace.’
Felix looked around, assessing their resources. One horse and a heavily laden wagon – that was all they had in the way of transport. He stood. It would have to do. ‘Unload Herr Reidle’s wagon and hitch Sir Teobalt’s horse to it. We will lay Sir Teobalt and the other wounded men in it.’
Both Reidle and Teobalt erupted at this.
‘Leave the beer?’ cried the merchant. ‘It’ll be stolen!’
‘Hitch Machtig to a cart!’ complained Teobalt. ‘Never! He is a warhorse. He has never stooped to such common duty, and never shall.’
‘That common duty may save your life,’ growled Gotrek.
‘And do you expect us to carry your beer to Bauholz?’ Felix asked Herr Reidle. ‘Not even a warhorse has the strength to pull all that.’
‘The horses from the other cart might come back,’ insisted R
eidle.
‘They might,’ said Felix. ‘But I’m not waiting all night to find out.’
Both the merchant and the knight continued to complain, but there was little they could do. Gotrek, Felix, Ortwin and the less wounded guard set to unloading the beer from the cart and hitching the warhorse to it as Kat bound the wounds of Teobalt and the maimed guard as best she could with a field kit she wore at her belt. The proud charger complained almost as bitterly as its master when they laid the yoke across its neck, but with Ortwin whispering soothing words in his ears it finally acquiesced. Then they laid Sir Teobalt, the wounded guard and his dead companions on the back, and set off for Bauholz as the hidden sky above turned from violet to cobalt, and the shadows of the trees closed in around them.
Felix had a thousand questions he wanted to ask Kat, for her trans-formation from a scared, sweet little girl to hardened beast-slayer was still a shock to him, but she had insisted on going ahead to scout the way and so he had no opportunity to talk to her. Instead he carried a lantern beside Ortwin as the youth led Machtig down the track. Gotrek took up the rear, keeping an eye out behind them in case more horrors came out of the woods.
After a half an hour or so during which Ortwin remained entirely silent, Felix looked over at him. The poor lad had had his first taste of adventure and it seemed to have stunned him a bit. Felix didn’t blame him. Death and mutilation at close range were a far different thing than death and mutilation in a book. Felix had become somewhat inured to it over the years, but he could well remember the feelings of terror and nausea that used to overcome him before and after a fight. Maybe the boy was having second thoughts about a life of adventure. He hoped so.
‘Not quite like it is in books, is it?’ he said, smiling sadly.
‘I’m sorry, sir?’ said Ortwin, lifting his head from his thoughts.
