by Warhammer
‘What was the name of the order?’ Kat asked. ‘I served as a scout during the fighting, and guided many knights north through the woods.’
‘The Order of the Fiery Heart,’ said Felix. ‘Sir Teobalt told me he had word of them a month ago, defending a village near Fort Stangenschloss from beastmen.’
Kat nodded, her brow furrowing. ‘I remember them, but from the beginning of the war. I did not see them or hear of them the last time I was at Stangenschloss.’ She shrugged. ‘They may have come and gone again while I was elsewhere. I am mostly in the woods.’
‘When were you last there?’ asked Felix.
‘About two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘Since the end of the war I have made it my job to guide refugees from Stangenschloss to Bauholz, and supply trains from Bauholz to Stangenschloss.’
‘How did you find us, then?’ Felix asked, frowning. ‘We weren’t on your route.’
‘There were rumours of beastmen near Bauholz, so I went hunting for them.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘That is my other job – my true job – finding the camps of the beastmen and leading the soldiers to them so that they can kill them all.’
Felix’s eyes widened. He could think of no more dangerous profession. The girl was mad – valiant – but mad. ‘That… that is very brave of you.’
‘I only follow your example,’ she said.
Felix groaned to himself. It was like Ortwin all over again! His was not a life to be emulated, particularly not by a petite young woman. He was about to say this when he saw she was yawning.
‘Good night, Felix,’ she said, closing her eyes.
‘Good night, Kat,’ he replied, but it took him a long time to go to sleep, and he looked over at her many times.
The next morning Felix woke so cold that he felt as if he were frozen to the floorboards. The others looked just as miserable – all except Gotrek, who might have been in Tilea in the summer for all the discomfort he showed.
Herr Reidle and the remaining guard went out as soon as they were up to try and find some horses and an escort to help them recover the barrels of beer they had left in the woods the night before, but Kat and Felix huddled around Doktor Vinck’s little iron stove and stomped their feet to get their blood moving.
As the doctor made them all willow tea, which was all he had to give them, Sir Teobalt beckoned Felix and Gotrek to his cot, where Ortwin was sitting him up and bundling him with everyone else’s blankets.
‘Though it pains me, it seems I must stay here for some time until my shoulder heals,’ Teobalt said in a tired voice. ‘But I would not have the search for my brother templars wait with me. I bid you continue to look for them, and if you find them, return with them to me.’
‘We will do our best, sir,’ said Felix, though he had secretly hoped that, now that he was injured, the knight would declare the adventure over.
Teobalt inclined his head. ‘My squire will accompany you to assist you.’
Felix paused at this. He didn’t want to take Ortwin along. The boy was more likely to be a burden than an able assistant. His bright-eyed naïvety and his desperate longing for glory were a sure recipe for disaster, and Felix didn’t want to have to keep an eye on him if things got rough. He had enough trouble looking after the Slayer.
‘Sir,’ he said at last. ‘I thank you for your concern, but the search is likely to be hazardous, and I wouldn’t like to endanger the life of your squire unnecessarily. The Slayer and I will be more effective on our own.’
The old knight’s eyes flashed up at him, recovering something of their old fire. ‘I am afraid I must insist, Herr Jaeger. Out of my sight, your enthusiasm for the vow you have made may wane. Ortwin shall be my eyes and ears, to see that you see the thing to its finish.’
Gotrek bristled at this. ‘You doubt our honour? We have sworn.’
‘You have done nothing yet to make me doubt it,’ said Teobalt stiffly. ‘But a man is entitled to ask for proof that a deed has been done. If you are truly honourable, you should have no objection to Ortwin’s presence. Honesty fears no scrutiny, as the saying goes.’
Felix could see that Gotrek was going to make further objection. He couldn’t let him. If they weren’t careful the argument could get out of hand and Sir Teobalt could withdraw the quest – and Felix’s chance to keep Karaghul.
‘If you insist, Sir Teobalt,’ Felix said. ‘And if Ortwin is willing to take the risk, then we will take him.’
‘I do insist,’ said Teobalt. ‘And I thank you for your acquiescence.’
Gotrek grunted unhappily, but then shrugged, resigned. Felix let out a relieved breath, but felt a pang of guilt as well. He had agreed to take the boy into danger just so he could get his sword back. That seemed a very callous thing to do. Of course, if Teobalt had forbidden them from searching for the templars, he would likely have sent Ortwin on the quest alone, so by bringing the squire along, Felix and Gotrek were actually protecting him. At least that’s what Felix told himself.
They decided over their tea that the best course of action was to go back into Bauholz proper and ask the soldiers and southbound refugees there if any of them had heard news of the Order of the Fiery Heart. If they learned nothing, then tomorrow they would set off for Stangenschloss and enquire there.
At that, Kat said that if they could wait another day, she would guide them. ‘I am to lead a supply train to the fort. They start the day after tomorrow, once one last supply boat from Ahlenhof arrives.’
Felix and Gotrek readily agreed. Neither of them was adept at navigating through deep woods.
Walking through the refugee camp on their way to the bridge to Bauholz, Felix could see that it was even worse than he had thought the night before. The inhabitants didn’t just live in a garbage heap, they lived in garbage itself. Some of the shacks were made from broken carts, or stacks of broken barrels or crates. Some were no more than stained bedsheets draped over a line.
Even in the freezing cold, the smell was abominable, and ice-ringed latrine pits were everywhere. Felix saw men, women and children huddling around small fires, cooking rats and pigeons for their breakfasts. Others seemed to be eating leaves and brown grass. All of them had the near-death gauntness that Doktor Vinck had shown. He wondered how any of them were going to survive the winter.
Even as he thought it, he saw two men carrying a woman out of a tent. She was as stiff as a log, and frosted with ice. One of the men had tears frozen on his face.
Felix shivered, and not from the cold. The true horror of war was not the battlefield, no matter how bloody. It was the aftermath – the disease and famine and displacement that followed when a land was laid waste. The knights did not suffer. They either died or went home to their plenty. The enemy did the same. It was the poor damned souls in whose fields the battles were fought that suffered, and not for days or weeks, but for years. He hated the iniquity of it.
As they neared the bridge, Kat sucked in a breath and slowed her steps.
Felix looked ahead. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Noseless Milo,’ she said, pointing with her chin. ‘He runs the refugee camp like Ludeker runs the village. He may want to make trouble.’
‘Good,’ said Gotrek. ‘I could use a warm-up.’
Felix looked to where Kat had pointed. A group of men in tattered leather jerkins lounged against the end posts of the bridge, swords and clubs dangling from their belts, watching everybody that passed. The passers-by all hunched their shoulders and ducked their heads as they edged by the men, as if they were afraid they were going to be hit. The men grinned and called out to some. Others they tripped and laughed at. One pinched a young girl on the behind as she went by and giggled as she scurried away across the bridge like a frightened rabbit.
‘Scum,’ said Gotrek.
‘Varlets,’ said Ortwin.
‘Aye,’ agreed Felix. After seeing the misery and deprivation around him, he too was angry enough to want a fight, particularly with anyone who was making life more miserable
for these people.
‘Please don’t fight them,’ begged Kat. ‘You will only make trouble for Doktor Vinck and the knight if you do. And me,’ she added.
Gotrek looked up at her. ‘Do these villains have some hold on you, little one?’
She shook her head. ‘No. But I cannot live completely in the woods. Sometimes I have to come back here. And I won’t be able to if…’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘I see.’
The biggest of the men looked up as they approached, and a snag-toothed smile snaked across his face. It was one of the ugliest faces Felix had seen that wasn’t on a mutant. The man was balding, with piggy little eyes in a moon face, but his most distinguishing feature was one he didn’t have. Just as Kat’s name for him suggested, he had no nose. It looked like it had been torn off a long while ago, and he was left now with nothing but two vertical slits in his face and a bit of white cartilage that poked out above them, all surrounded by a puckered sphincter of scar tissue.
‘’Lo, Kat,’ he said, in a pleasant, mocking voice, as his eyes trailed over Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin. ‘Looking lovely as always. Who’s yer friends?’
His men sidled forwards, grinning and blocking the way.
FIVE
‘Let us pass, Milo,’ said Kat, sticking out her chin. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’
‘Come in last night, didn’t they?’ said Milo, ignoring her. ‘Stayed with Herr Doktor.’ He smiled at her look of alarm. ‘You think I wouldn’t know? I may not have a nose, but I got eyes everywhere.’
His men laughed at that. Felix noticed that none of them appeared to be starving.
Milo looked from Gotrek’s glowering face, to the gold on his wrists, and finally to Felix. ‘You and yer mates staying in town long, sir?’
‘They’re just travellers going up to Stangenschloss, Milo,’ said Kat before Felix could answer. ‘They’re no concern of yours.’
Milo raised his eyebrows. ‘Going to Stangenschloss at this time of year? Y’must be hearty men, then. Regular champions, I’ll wager.’
‘Leave them alone, Milo,’ sighed Kat. ‘They won’t work for you.’
Milo scowled. ‘Why don’t y’let the gentlemen speak for themselves, Kat?’
‘We’re not looking for work,’ said Felix stiffly.
‘Oh come now, sir,’ said Milo, smiling. ‘Stangenschloss is a hard berth in the winter. Likely to be the death of ye, what with all them northers and beastmen running about. Why slog all the way up there when there’s good money to be made right here for a man who can use his fists? Or a dwarf,’ he added with a wink to Gotrek.
He shot a sly glance over his shoulder at the walled village just over the bridge. ‘And promise of even more money very soon, ain’t that right, lads?’ He swivelled his ugly head back to Felix as his men laughed evilly. ‘So, what do y’say, sir? Spend the winter in comfort in lovely old Bauholz?’
‘We already have employment,’ said Felix. ‘Sorry. Now, please, step aside.’
An angry twitch flickered across Milo’s face for the briefest second at this, but it was covered instantly by a shrug and a rueful smile. ‘All right, all right, no harm in asking, is there? If y’change yer minds, Kat knows where to find me.’
He stepped aside and shooed his men back so that the bridge was clear, then winked at Kat as she, Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin passed between them. ‘Bye now, beloved. And if y’get tired of freezing yer tail off at Herr Doktor’s, remember I’ve always got a warm bed waiting for ye if ye want it.’ He chuckled, low and dirty. ‘And all the sausage y’can eat.’
Gotrek growled at that, and Felix’s fists clenched. Ortwin’s eyes blazed. They made to turn around, but Kat shook her head, and they kept walking. She let out a relieved breath as they reached the other side of the bridge and got out of earshot.
‘He wouldn’t be known as noseless Milo when I got through with him,’ said Gotrek.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Kat. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘The villain,’ said Ortwin, outraged. ‘Hoarding sausage when all these poor souls are starving!’
Kat stifled a laugh. Felix blinked and almost said something, then let it go. Why dirty a pristine mind?
Instead he turned to Kat. ‘What did he want to hire us for?’
Kat looked back over her shoulder. ‘Milo wants to run all of Bauholz. He is trying to get enough men and arms together to drive out Ludeker and take over. He makes the same offer to every able-bodied man who comes through town.’ She turned to Gotrek. ‘Be careful, Gotrek. They were looking at your bracelets.’
Gotrek snorted. ‘They can look all they want, little one.’
She grinned at that, and Felix saw lines appear at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He looked her over again, as if seeing her for the first time. He had been thinking of her as a young girl, and with her shyness and her small frame she had appeared so under the shadows of the forest last night. But in the morning sun he could see that she was no longer in the first blush of youth. She would be twenty-six or twenty-seven now, he calculated, and though they looked good on her, they had not been easy years.
They paid another eight pfennig foot tax to get back through Bauholz’s village gate, and then they were inside, where everything was a bustle of soldiers and boatmen and wagons being loaded into Ludeker’s warehouse.
Kat told Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin that she knew some people in the village who she could ask about the Templars of the Fiery Heart, and it would be better if she went alone. She suggested they ask around in the Powder and Shot, the tavern that had once been the Sigmarite temple. It was always full of soldiers, either coming north or going south. ‘But watch out,’ she said as they parted at the intersection. ‘Ludeker’s men will try to get money out of you any way they can. And they don’t take no for an answer.’
Gotrek snorted again, and Felix smiled.
‘Don’t worry, Kat,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘We can take care of ourselves too.’
‘Aye,’ said Ortwin, puffing up his chest. ‘We can take care of ourselves.’
Felix and Gotrek exchanged a private look at that.
‘How much?’ asked Gotrek, with a dangerous rasp to his voice.
‘A shilling a mug, Herr dwarf,’ said the barman.
Felix blinked as he fished in his belt pouch. ‘Even the best dwarf beer in Altdorf only costs half that,’ he said.
‘Well, this ain’t Altdorf, mein Herr,’ said the barman, pouring two pints. ‘Costs an arm and a leg to get it up here – sometimes literally. One of our suppliers was just in here, said he lost three men last night trying to bring a shipment in. Now he’s hired a cart and some bullies to fetch it out of the woods. You know he’s going to add that to the price.’
Felix reluctantly put three shillings down on the bar, and he and Gotrek and Ortwin drank deep from the mugs the barman set in front of them. Felix made a face. It was flat and thin, as if they’d been mixing it with water.
Gotrek choked and set the mug down like he’d found rat droppings in it. ‘How much is the good beer?’ he asked.
‘That’s the only beer there is, Herr dwarf,’ said the barman.
Gotrek pushed the mug back towards the barman, stone-faced.
Felix did the same. ‘We’ll wait until Reidle brings the fresh barrels,’ he said.
Ortwin kept drinking.
As they stepped away from the bar, two soldiers staggered past them and called for two beers. Felix shook his head as he heard the barman say, ‘Here you are, gents. Already poured. I saw you coming. That’ll be a shilling each.’
Gotrek and Felix surveyed the taproom. It still retained the shape of a temple of Sigmar, but trestle tables with little three-legged stools around them lined the nave, and the bar was where the altar had once been, with kegs lined up against the back wall, under the place where the golden hammer should have hung.
This early in the morning, the tavern wasn’t terribly busy, only about a quarter full, with as many eating food as were d
rinking. Felix didn’t like to think how much the food must cost if the beer was so expensive. He was glad they still had some of their road rations, or they would be broke before they left on the morrow.
On the left a crowd of young men in the colours of the town of Schmiedorf were talking animatedly amongst themselves as they drank and looked around with excited eyes. Beyond them were some river men, talking in low tones to a man in the same uniform as the men who had stopped Felix and the others at the gate the night before. He dismissed both groups. The soldiers were new recruits, just come north, and would have no information, and the river men would know of nothing north of Bauholz.
On the right side of the room was a more promising bunch. Spearmen of Wissenland practically asleep in their seats, with more scars and bandages among them than a Shallyan hospital. These men had been in the north. They might know.
Gotrek was already heading to them. Felix followed him, with Ortwin tailing behind. They sat down beside the weary men at one of the tables and Felix smiled at their sergeant, a red-headed man with only one ear.
‘Heading home, sergeant?’ he asked.
The sergeant nodded. ‘Aye, sir, as soon as there’s a space on a boat. Damned harbour master says it’ll be a week.’
‘Where were you fighting?’ asked Ortwin eagerly. ‘Did you kill many Kurgan?’
The soldiers turned dead eyes on him, staring in dull wonder.
‘Aye,’ said the sergeant. ‘Plenty. From Middenheim to the Howling Hills. Chased ’em like hounds. Not that it made any difference. There was always more.’
His men murmured in agreement.
‘Always more,’ repeated one.
‘Did you pass by Stangenschloss on your way here?’ Felix asked.
The sergeant nodded. ‘We was sent home from there. Service done. Pay coming. Go home and wait.’
‘Did you by chance happen to see, or to hear of, a group of knights called the Order of the Fiery Heart on your travels?’ Felix pressed. ‘Their insignia is a heart with a halo of flame.’
