by Warhammer
‘I was just wondering if our fight just now lived up to your expectations.’
Ortwin shook his head, eyes wide and far away. ‘It was… it was glorious!’
Felix blinked at him, stunned. ‘Uh… glorious?’
‘Oh yes, sir!’
Felix frowned, anger stirring inside him. Was the boy bloodthirsty? Was he cold-hearted? ‘You weren’t frightened of the beasts? You weren’t troubled by the slaughter of Reidle’s guards, or the horses? Or by poor Sir Teobalt’s grievous wounds?’
‘Of course I was,’ said Ortwin, not appearing to notice Felix’s hard tone. ‘I have never been so terrified in my life, Herr Jaeger. They were the foulest creatures I have ever set eyes upon, and they did vile, horrible things. My heart was near frozen with fear. But… but we vanquished them! We looked into the face of evil and though we were sorely tested, we did not flinch. We persevered! We have pushed back the forces of Chaos!’
A laugh burst from Felix though he tried to stop it. ‘We haven’t even given the forces of Chaos a paper-cut. And we didn’t persevere over anything. We were about to die defending a wagonload of beer from a bunch of mindless beasts, when a girl with a good eye and a quick draw saved us. And I flinched plenty.’
Ortwin turned and stared at him, his eyes wide in the lantern light, his mouth open. Felix sighed. He shouldn’t have been so harsh. He had broken the boy’s poor sheltered heart with his hard-won bitterness.
He coughed. ‘Listen, Ortwin, I…’
But then Ortwin laughed and grinned at him. ‘Oh, but I see! This is the grim humour that I love so much in your books. The self-mocking jokes you use to disguise the true nobility of your acts.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Forgive me, sir. For a moment I almost thought you serious, but I see now that, like all good knights, you are truly humble, and do not wish to be praised for your deeds.’
It was Felix’s turn to stare. The boy really thought he was joking. Felix opened his mouth to tell him that he wasn’t kidding, and that he actually meant what he said, but then he closed it again. What was the point? Ortwin probably wouldn’t believe him anyway, and besides, there was no need to shatter the boy’s delusions about the world so quickly. He would find out for himself soon enough.
‘Believe what you like, Ortwin,’ said Felix, defeated. ‘Just keep buying the books.’
Ortwin laughed. ‘Very good, sir. Very good!’
Felix sighed and they walked on in silence.
At last, an hour into true night, the wagon came out of the forest into a narrow area of cleared land beside the Zufuhr river, and Felix saw, on its banks, the silhouette of a small, palisaded village in the distance, a faint glow of torchlight illuminating the tops of its squat wooden watch-towers. Felix noted that the fields were patchy with dead weeds and stray stalks of wheat, all gone to seed. It appeared that there had been no planting and no harvest this year. How had the village survived?
He turned away from Ortwin, looking around for Kat, and jumped when he discovered that she was already beside him. It was as if she had stepped out from behind a moonbeam. ‘Oh!’ he said, then lowered his voice. ‘There you are.’
‘I must warn you, Fel…’ she paused suddenly and looked down. ‘I… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to call you now.’
Felix smiled as they started towards the town again. What a strange young woman she was, so vicious and yet so demure at the same time. ‘You may still call me Felix, Kat,’ he said. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, after all.’
‘Thank you, Felix,’ she said, smiling shyly.
His heart fluttered uncomfortably in his chest as her smile lanced through him. It seemed wrong to be stirred by someone you last knew as a seven-year-old, but filthy as she was, she was undeniably attractive. ‘You’re… most welcome,’ he mumbled. ‘Er, what was it you were saying?’
Her face grew grim and she nodded towards the village. ‘Bauholz. I wanted to warn you that it is a bad town.’
‘Oh?’
‘It was good once,’ she said. ‘Before the war. It was my home from the woods. But the war killed it, and now the soldiers and bandits are feeding on the corpse.’
‘Soldiers?’ asked Felix.
‘Aye. A man from the south and his men – Captain Ludeker.’ She spat on the ground at the name. ‘He was like all the others, coming back from the war on his way home, but then he decided to stay and rob all the rest. Now he runs the town.’
Felix frowned. He knew about those kinds of soldiers. They were in every war, and on every side. ‘What has he done?’
‘He steals from the supply boats going north and sells seats on all the boats going south. All the refugees must pay him to board, and he charges a fortune. He has turned the strong house and the temple of Sigmar into taverns, and he runs dice and card games in them, and keeps women upstairs. Every soldier that comes through town has his pocket picked.’ She looked up into Felix’s face, her eyes flashing. ‘Beware of him, Felix, and tell Gotrek too. He will try to take everything you own.’
Felix chuckled, imagining anyone trying to take anything from Gotrek. ‘I will be sure to warn him,’ he said. ‘But if the town is so bad, why are we going there?’
She pointed across the Zufuhr. ‘We’re not. We are going to the refugee camp on the other side of the river, but the only bridge is within the town. There is no other way across for miles.’
Felix frowned. ‘You’re taking us to a refugee camp?’
‘Yes,’ said Kat. ‘To Herr Doktor Vinck. He is my friend. He will doctor your friends.’
Felix nodded, though he wondered how qualified a doctor that lived among refugees would be.
Kat turned to him, biting her lip, as the walls of the town loomed before them. ‘Er, do you have any money?’ she asked.
‘Ah, a little. Why?’
‘Ludeker has made a gate tax.’
‘Who’s that, then?’ said a voice in the darkness.
Felix peered ahead to the big closed gate and saw two men in dirt-grimed uniforms that suggested they were from a company of Streissen handgunners strolling out from a small torchlit side door, naked swords dangling from casual hands.
‘Travellers with wounded,’ said Felix. ‘Please let us in.’
‘Wounded?’ said the first man suspiciously. He was a thin-faced fellow with lank blond hair. ‘What happened to ye?’
‘We were attacked by beastmen in the woods,’ said Reidle from where he sat on the buckboard. ‘I beg you, sirs, be swift.’
The two men looked out into the night at the mention of beastmen, gripping their weapons tighter.
‘There’s beasts about and you want us to open the gate?’ said the second man, a square-built tough with a three-day beard. He took a step back towards the little door.
‘Please,’ said Ortwin, stepping up beside Felix. ‘They have hurt my master. He requires a doctor.’
‘Open the gate, Wappler,’ sighed Kat. ‘The beastmen are dead. You’ve no need to fear.’
Wappler, the thinner man, peered towards her. ‘Is it the she-beast, then? Brought us some more deadbeat refugees?’
The thick man laughed. ‘Don’t need any more of those. Town’s full.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ asked Gotrek, coming from behind the wagon.
The two guards turned to him, then stared, their eyes drawn to the golden bracelets on his wrists, which gleamed warmly in the torchlight.
Wappler licked his lips. ‘We’ll open the gates, yer worships,’ he said. ‘But first there’s the matter of the taxes.’
‘Aye,’ said the other, shouldering his sword. ‘We have a foot tax here in Bauholz – for wear and tear on the public way. One pfennig per foot.’
Wappler walked among them, muttering under his breath. ‘Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, and four for the horse makes sixteen. Now who do we have in the back?’ He peered over the side of the beer wagon where Teobalt and the badly wounded guard dozed between the corpses of the others. ‘Four more. That makes
twenty-four. Two shillings.’
‘Two of those men are dead,’ said Felix.
‘Still got feet, haven’t they?’
‘But they’re not going to make much wear and tear on the public way,’ Felix protested.
Wappler shrugged. ‘I don’t make the laws, mein herr, I just enforce ’em.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Now, there’s also the danger tax – opening the gate when there’s hostiles about. That’s a shilling.’
‘And the wounded tax,’ said his companion. ‘Four pennies each for each man who can’t walk through the gate on his own. That’s another eight pennies.’
‘Right, that’s three shillings and… aw, just round it up to four shillings, then,’ said Wappler cheerily. ‘That’s easier.’
‘A wounded tax?’ rasped Gotrek menacingly.
‘Aye, herr dwarf,’ said Wappler. ‘A man who’s wounded can’t work, and is therefore a burden on the community. Got to compensate for that, haven’t we?’
Gotrek balled his fists, and his single eye sparked like a lit fuse in the torchlight. ‘You can take your taxes and shove them up your skinny little human–’
‘I’ll pay, sirs!’ said Ortwin, stepping forwards hastily. ‘I would not argue while my master bleeds.’
He took a purse from his belt and shook out four silver shillings. Wappler took the money and signalled behind him, his eyes never leaving Gotrek. ‘Be glad I didn’t levy a resisting taxation tax on you, dwarf,’ he said.
‘You should be glad too,’ growled Gotrek.
With a creaking of rope and timber, the big gates swung slowly open and the party started forwards into Bauholz.
Beyond the torches at the gate, the little village was dark, and it was hard to see many details, but Felix could see enough to realise that Bauholz was not a healthy town. The silhouettes of the little houses were lopsided and tumble-down, some with the ribs of their roof timbers naked to the sky. There was rubbish in the street and a stink of excrement, urine and rot all around. Things skittered away from them in the dark.
Towards the centre of the village there was more light – quite a bit of it in fact. Bright lanterns hung outside two large structures on opposite corners of the central intersection. To the right was a squat, stone strong house with a crenellated roof that must have been the town’s last line of defence at one time. Now it seemed to be a bawdy house. There was a shield above the door that sported the coat of arms of Countess Emmanuelle von Liebewitz, and drunken songs and women’s laughter came from within it. To the left was the old stone temple of Sigmar that Kat had said the soldiers had made into a tavern. The hammer had been taken down from above the door and replaced with a sign that showed a barrel of blackpowder with pyramids of cannon balls piled around it. Roaring laughter and heated argument spilled from its open door, and a man in the uniform of an Ostland spearman was being violently sick on the front steps.
‘Ludeker’s places,’ whispered Kat.
‘Lovely,’ said Felix.
At the intersection, she led them to the right, down a dirty street that sloped towards the river. A sturdy warehouse – in better repair than any other building in the village – squatted to the left, and beyond it, the town’s wall stretched out a little way into the water to guard the end of a wooden bridge. More guards stood before it, barring the way.
Felix raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me.’
Kat nodded, embarrassed. ‘Aye. Another tax.’
If the village was a garbage dump, the refugee camp was a pigsty – a muddy field by the river with dozens of tents and makeshift shacks sticking up from it like broken kites trampled into a swamp.
‘Are you sure this is best?’ asked Reidle, looking around uncertainly from the bench of the wagon as he followed them.
‘Your men will get no care in the village, mein Herr,’ said Kat. ‘Not any worth the price, at least.’ She looked around at the camp angrily. ‘Doktor Vinck was once the mayor of Bauholz, the most respected man in town,’ she said. ‘Now he lives here. It isn’t right.’
‘What happened?’ asked Ortwin.
Kat sighed. ‘Marauders came during the invasion. The people hid in the woods. When they came back, they found it all ruined. Captain Ludeker came a while later with his men. He offered to rebuild the town and protect it. Doktor Vinck said no, they didn’t need the help, but the rest of the people were scared. They asked Ludeker to stay, so he did.’ She kicked a pebble. ‘He tried to charge Doktor Vinck rent on his own house if he wanted to practise medicine there. Doktor Vinck refused. Now he is here and Ludeker lives in his house.’
‘This Captain Ludeker sounds like a charming fellow,’ said Felix.
Kat snorted and kicked another pebble.
The doctor lived near the centre of the ramshackle encampment, in a tent only slightly grander than those around it – its principal amenity being that it had a plank floor that mostly kept the mud out.
Kat rapped the edge of this floor with the toe of her boot as they drew the wagon up in the narrow street outside it. ‘Herr Doktor, are you at home?’ she called.
‘Just a minute, just a minute,’ came a reedy voice from within, and a few moments later the flap of the tent was pushed aside and a thin old man in a night shirt and a scarf looked out at them, wispy white hair floating in the night breeze. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Young Kat. You have some business for me?’
Felix winced a little when he saw the man. There was thin and there was gaunt. Herr Doktor Vinck was gaunt. He looked of an age with Sir Teobalt, but he appeared to be starving to death. And maybe this was the case. If it cost so much just to get inside Bauholz, how much would it cost to get food? There was obviously none stored from the harvest. There had been no harvest. All the food in the town would have had to be imported from somewhere else, and Felix could not imagine that prices were cheap.
‘These men fought beastmen in the forest,’ said Kat. ‘All are wounded. Two are dire.’
‘Well, bring them in, bring them in,’ said the doctor, holding aside the tent flap. ‘And we shall see what we can do.’
Felix, Gotrek, Ortwin and the less wounded guard carried in Sir Teobalt and the other guard and laid them on the bare floorboards. There were two makeshift cots at the back of the tent, but they were already occupied, one with a young woman and a baby, the other with a man with a bandage around his head – all asleep. The rest of the tent was hardly better furnished – a small iron stove and a barrel of water on one side, a table and stool on the other, and a chair in the centre with a little tray full of barber and dentistry tools next to it. A curtain hung half-open before the entrance to another room. Felix saw another cot in it.
Doktor Vinck dragged a surgeon’s bag out from behind the stove and then examined Teobalt and the unconscious guard, tsking and murmuring as he pulled back Kat’s crude bandages and poked and prodded. ‘Broken arm. Broken leg. Lacerations. Sigmar, that’s a nasty cut.’
Teobalt woke with a hiss as the doctor turned to him and manipulated his shoulder.
‘Good evening, sir knight,’ said Doktor Vinck. ‘Sorry to wake you.’
The templar lay back and composed himself. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Pray continue.’
The doctor smiled. ‘Thank you. May I have a look at your eyes? Very good. And if you could move your fingers? Excellent. Well, I shall have a busy night tonight, and no mistake.’
He turned to Felix and the others. ‘My friends, we will start with this fellow here,’ he said, pointing to the unconscious guard, who had horrible gashes on his chest and arms, and a leg that was bent at an unnatural angle. ‘If you would be so kind as to hold his arms and legs while I wash his wounds and sew them up?’
Ortwin spluttered at this. ‘My master is a knight, sir. You will attend to him first!’
Doktor Vinck glared at him as he dipped a bucket in the barrel of water. ‘Your master has only bruises, minor cuts, a concussion and a dislocated shoulder. He will not die if he waits a while. This man will.’
‘But
–’ began Ortwin.
‘Obey the doctor, novitiate,’ said Teobalt. ‘We are in his domain here.’
Doktor Vinck bowed to the knight, then collected a bottle of vinegar from the table. ‘There is no hierarchy here but the hierarchy of need, young sir. Now, if you wish your master to be seen to quickly, then you would do well to assist me with the first.’
Ortwin frowned stubbornly at this and muttered under his breath, but after watching for a while, gave in and joined the others as they helped the doctor with his surgery.
More than two hours later, Felix lay down with the others on the bare floor beside the patched-up men and tried to sleep. The surgery had been long and unpleasant, and in the end the guard that Doktor Vinck had tried to patch first had died. He had lost too much blood. They had put him outside on the wagon with the other bodies and concentrated on saving Sir Teobalt, and then patching the rest of them. Teobalt had survived, at least for now. His arm had been set back in its socket and bound tightly. His lacerations had been bandaged and the hideous bruises on his legs where the beastman had trod on him and crushed his armour had been bled with leeches and salved. Doktor Vinck also gave him a draught of ‘elixir of poppy’ to help his sleep. Felix noticed that the good doctor had a gulp of it himself before he retired to his room.
Felix wouldn’t have minded a sip himself, for the floor was hard and cold, and his aches and cuts and bruises from the fight were less than comfortable. It made it hard to sleep. He shifted, hissing, then rolled over – and found Kat staring at him from her space beside him on the floor.
His heart thudded at the intensity of her stare. ‘Uh, hello?’ he said uncertainly.
‘Where have you been, Felix?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘And why have you come back again?’
Felix let out a sigh, then chuckled. What a question. ‘It’s too late in the evening to tell you everywhere I’ve been, Kat. It’s a long story. As to why I’ve come back to the Drakwald…’ He paused, suddenly embarrassed. It sounded silly and old-fashioned to say it. ‘I am on a quest,’ he said at last, and waited for her to laugh, but she took it without even a smile. ‘The sword I carry belongs to Sir Teobalt’s knightly order. He has said that I can keep it if I help him find out what happened to his brother templars.’
