by Warhammer
The wolf rolled, trying to crush him, but Gotrek leapt at it, spear high, and stabbed its exposed throat with such power that the point punched out the back of its neck and nearly put Rodi’s eye out.
The wolf went limp and Rodi pushed it off. ‘Are you trying to make me like you, Gurnisson?’
Gotrek let the spear drop and climbed back into the cart. ‘You’ll never be like me.’
‘Grimnir, I hope not,’ said Rodi, following him. ‘Still chasing my doom twenty years from now? No thanks.’
A twinge of anger flashed across Gotrek’s face as they sat down again, but he said nothing, only picked up the sprung link of his broken chain, slipped both ends into it, then twisted it closed. Snorri chuckled and did the same, and Rodi followed suit.
Kat stared in wonder at this casual display of strength and was about to say something when Geert and one of his cargo men limped out of the fog, their faces bruised and their clothes torn. The other cargo man wasn’t with them.
‘Sigmar’s blood!’ cried Geert when he saw the dead spearmen. ‘Here’s two more!’
He and the cargo man ran to the dead boys, then saw the wolf and cursed again. Geert looked from the dead beast to his prisoners and back, glaring suspiciously.
‘Show me yer chains!’
Felix, Kat and the Slayers obligingly lifted their chains. Geert grunted to see them whole.
‘Then who killed this here wolf?’ he asked.
Rodi nodded to the dead spearmen. ‘They did.’
‘And who killed them?’
‘The wolf did,’ said Gotrek.
Geert and the cargo man looked dubiously from the wolf to the spearmen and back.
‘And how did they kill each other when they was so far apart?’
‘It was something,’ said Felix, getting into the spirit. ‘You should have seen it.’
Kat stifled a laugh and Geert glared at her, but after a moment he just shook his head and stomped off to his tent with the cargo man following.
‘Snorri wishes there had been another wolf,’ said Snorri. ‘So he could have fought one too.’
Gotrek grunted at this, but said nothing, only glared into the distance and twisted his chains. Rodi in turn glared at Gotrek and stroked his braided beard, while Snorri lay back, oblivious, humming an off-key tune. The same tortuous round again, Felix thought as he looked at the Slayers. The same irresolvable tangle. He sighed and sat back and returned to watching the fog for loping black shapes.
For two more days, the pattern remained the same – a pyre of the day’s dead as they broke camp at nightfall, a dull march across the featureless landscape during the hours of darkness, and shadowy hit-and-run attacks all through the fog-bound day. It was impossible to tell what progress the army was making when every mist-shrouded hill and valley looked the same as the one before, but to Felix it seemed the column was marching slower and slower, the sleepless, terror-filled days and nights taking a toll of weariness and despair.
And perhaps the column truly had slowed, for, two hours before sunset on the evening of the fourth day, a squad of von Volgen’s knights came thundering into the camp, shouting that the zombies were not more than an hour away.
As their troops scrambled to dress and pack and get into march order, von Kotzebue and von Volgen and their captains convened at the north edge of the camp, looking into the grey fog as if they might see the encroaching horde from there. They talked near where Geert had left his cart, and Felix could hear them plainly.
‘They have marched night and day,’ said von Volgen, ‘while we have only marched nights.’
‘Yes,’ said von Kotzebue. ‘It is as I feared. Slow as they are, they never stop. We will not outrun them before we reach Castle Reikguard. At least…’
‘At least the foot soldiers won’t,’ said von Volgen when the baron trailed off. ‘Yes?’
Von Kotzebue nodded. ‘I have less than three thousand foot troops left, and most of them wounded, starving and exhausted. The horde must number more than ten thousand. If my men stand and fight, they will die, and do nothing but add to the necromancer’s ranks. If they run, it is the same. Your two hundred knights, however–’
‘We will not abandon you, my lord,’ said von Volgen, drawing himself up.
Von Kotzebue tilted his head, and Felix thought he saw him smile through his enormous moustache. ‘I was thinking more that we would abandon you.’
Von Volgen frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is this way,’ said the baron. ‘The necromancer says he is driving for Altdorf, and plans to take the towns and castles in his way to bolster his troops. Castle Reikguard must be his first target, for it has the largest garrison, and he cannot afford to have it at his back. But to take it, he must act swiftly, before a concerted defence can be brought against him. Therefore, I believe if our infantry were to turn away from his line of march, he could not afford to follow. He could not spare the time.’
He looked west. ‘We are almost due east of Weidmaren here. If I were to march west and bolster their garrison, while you and your knights raced south-west to do the same at Castle Reikguard, we would starve him of fresh troops, and make two of the strongholds he absolutely must take that much harder to win.’ He turned back to von Volgen. ‘What say you?’
Von Volgen stroked his heavy chin. ‘I see the sense of it, but I wonder if Graf Reiklander will welcome an armed force of Talabecland men within his walls.’
‘In the face of an enemy such as this necromancer, my lord,’ said von Kotzebue, ‘surely Empire must come before province.’
‘Aye, baron,’ said von Volgen. ‘I only hope my lord Reiklander sees it that way.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, if you will take my foot troops and my wounded as well, I and my knights will speed south-west as you suggested.’
Von Kotzebue bowed. ‘Of course. I will give my sergeants their orders.’
The two lords and their captains turned from the fog-shrouded vista, but before they had taken more than a few steps into the bustling camp, Rodi raised himself up in his chains and called after them.
‘Hoy, lordling!’ he barked. ‘Aye, you. The one who can’t tell the dead from the living. If you’re running away, why not free us instead? We wouldn’t want to slow you down.’
Von Volgen’s brutish brow lowered into a scowl, and he turned his eyes to Geert. ‘Make your cart ready to go,’ he said. ‘And find some extra chains.’
Geert saluted and the lords walked away.
‘At this rate, beardling,’ said Gotrek without looking around, ‘you’ll live long enough to learn when to shut your mouth.’
For the next two days, von Volgen and his two hundred knights rode hard to the south-west, with Geert’s cart rattling along behind the other supply wagons. At noon on the first day, they plunged into the dark forest that bordered the Barren Hills. The narrow track they followed was old and often overgrown, and for all von Volgen’s urgings that they make haste, sometimes the servants and cargo men were forced to stop and shoulder the carts over thick roots that humped up out of the path, or to guide them across rushing streams.
Each time this occurred, the dwarfs would watch from the cart, smug, as the men did the heavy work because von Volgen refused to unchain them. Felix was too uneasy to enjoy the irony. Whenever they slowed, he would stare into the depths of forest, fearing that at any moment undead horrors would lurch out of the shadows and attack. Adding to his nerves was the fact that von Volgen had sent his field surgeons along with his wounded to join von Kotzebue’s train, so if an attack did happen, there would be no one to patch them up.
But no attack came. Not that day, nor that night when they made camp in a cramped glade not far from the track. Felix dreamed again of wolf howls and black wings, but when he woke, sweat freezing on his brow, he heard nothing, and there were no alarms from von Volgen’s sentries.
The next day was the same as the first, except with freezing rain. The forest was so thick over their heads that even though the winter
trees were bare of leaves the raindrops did not reach them, only great fat drips from the black branches that nonetheless soaked them to the bone. Felix tried to drape his cloak over himself and Kat, but they were chained just too far apart, and neither of them were fully covered. The dwarfs still showed no discomfort, except for wringing out their beards and flipping their drooping crests out their eyes. Snorri’s crest of nails made little red rivulets of rust that dripped off the end of his bulbous nose like blood.
The next morning, the rain stopped, though the clouds remained. Unfortunately, the downpour had made a mud bath of their track, and there were many stops to pull the wagons out of wheel-sucking ruts, but at last, in the middle of the afternoon, the column came out of the forest and into a wet patchwork of dreary farmland, the fields black and brown and bare under stone-grey clouds.
Felix sighed with relief to be out of the woods, and it seemed the knights shared his mood. They had been almost entirely silent for the last two days, talking only when necessary, and laughing not at all, but now they began to chat and joke amongst themselves.
Geert stood up on the buckboard of the cart and pointed ahead. ‘That’ll be Castle Reikguard, or I’m a goblin,’ he said to his surviving cargo man, Dirk.
‘Soon be warm and dry now,’ said Dirk, nodding.
‘And on trial,’ said Rodi, without looking up.
Gotrek didn’t raise his head either, but Felix and Kat stood as high as they could in their chains and craned their necks. A dull gleam, far in the misty distance, was the Reik, snaking north and west towards Altdorf – and rising from it, like some massive, high-prowed stone ship, was a towering castle, heavy walls of dark granite circling a craggy hill to surround a stern old keep. A great tower jutted from its black slate roof, rising so high its pennons were lost in the lowering clouds.
Felix had seen the castle often as a boy travelling with his father on business. It had been a familiar landmark to be watched for on the way to Nuln, and he was surprised what a sense of nostalgia and comfort he felt seeing it again. The castle was the hereditary seat of the Reikland princes, and also Karl Franz’s summer home, as well as the home of the garrison that had guarded the Reikland’s north-eastern border since before Magnus the Pious. He felt, suddenly, that after his long trek through the wild and dangerous Drakwald, he was back in the civilised heart of the Empire. This was where his people were their strongest. This was home.
A thudding of hooves behind them made him turn his head. One of von Volgen’s rearguard knights was galloping towards them down the forest road, his horse’s flanks flecked with foam and his eyes wide and staring.
‘My lord!’ he cried as he reached the tail of the column. ‘My lord! They’re coming!’
The knight thundered on towards the vanguard before Felix could hear who was coming, and he and Kat and the Slayers looked back towards the forest, as did Geert and Dirk.
‘What did he mean?’ babbled Geert. ‘Not them corpses? They couldn’t have caught up with us so fast, could they?’
The knights were turning too, wheeling their horses around to face the woods, now a half-mile behind them, and a moment later von Volgen and his captains cantered back to stand with them and stare at the distant wall of trees.
‘You are certain?’ asked von Volgen, when nothing happened.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said the knight, panting along with his horse. ‘And the wolves with them. They–’
Then they appeared.
From the dark of the forest came a swift, roiling blackness, shot through with flashes of white and steel and bronze, like shooting stars in a turbulent sky. Then the flashes resolved themselves. The white was bone – skull-faced riders leaning low over the necks of bone-shanked horses. The steel was swords and axes and lance-tips, held in gauntleted hands. The bronze was helms and breastplates and greaves of ancient design. And as the skeletons rode, the clouds in the sky above them lowered and blackened, so that the green fire that flickered in their empty eye sockets glowed brighter.
Felix swallowed, fear clutching at his insides. This was no shambling mob of clumsy corpses, mindless and unarmed. These riders were charging towards them in a disciplined line, as fast as smoke before a strong wind. A spike-helmed warrior in full plate led them, a black sword held high in one gauntleted fist, while the low black forms of dire wolves loped between their steeds like silent shadows.
‘About eighty, my lord,’ said one of von Volgen’s captains, fighting to keep the fear out of his voice. ‘Perhaps a hundred.’
Von Volgen’s heavy jaw tightened and he wheeled his horse around. ‘Make for the castle,’ he said. ‘Now!’
He galloped for the front of the column with his captains bawling orders to the wagons and the knights as they raced behind him.
Geert called up a prayer to Taal and slapped the reins over the backs of his horses as the column started forwards. ‘Come on, Bette! Come on, Countess!’
The cargo man, Dirk, drew a hatchet out from under the driver’s bench and made the sign of Sigmar.
Felix watched, mesmerised, as the undead riders surged closer behind them and von Volgen’s knights and the other wagons pulled away ahead of them. Weaponless aboard the slowest of the wagons, he and Kat and the Slayers were worse off than they had been against the wolves in the fog. The skeletal knights would ride them down before they were halfway to Castle Reikguard.
THREE
‘Will you allow this doom, Gurnisson?’ asked Rodi, sneering. ‘Does it meet with your approval?’
Gotrek glared back at the encroaching riders. ‘It does not,’ he said, then snapped his chains and stood.
Rodi and Snorri took that as a sign and broke theirs too, while Gotrek freed Felix and Kat.
‘Thank you, Gotrek,’ said Kat, rubbing her wrists.
‘Then what are you doing?’ asked Rodi. ‘Are you going to fight?’
‘I am going to see that Snorri Nosebiter reaches the manling castle,’ Gotrek said, and pulled up one of the tightly rolled lengths of canvas tenting that lay on the bed of the cart.
Rodi snorted. ‘We could do that by jumping off and facing them.’
‘Do what you will,’ said Gotrek, and heaved the first roll off the cart.
‘Snorri doesn’t want to go to a castle,’ said Snorri, trying to stand on his one leg. ‘Snorri wants to fight.’
Rodi shot an angry glance at the old Slayer, then cursed and started throwing off the canvas as well. Felix and Kat joined him.
Geert looked back, alarmed, as he heard the canvas rolls splat behind them on the muddy road. ‘Hoy! What are y’doing free? And those are my tents!’
‘You want to go back and get them?’ asked Felix as he and Kat pitched another roll off the back.
Geert groaned unhappily, but only turned back and cracked the reins again.
The cart flew faster with every canvas they unloaded, and was soon bouncing and lurching in a terrifying fashion, but it was still not fast enough. They had caught up with the other carts, but von Volgen’s knights were pulling further ahead, and the undead riders kept gaining.
Kat bent to shove off some of the tent poles that lay stacked in the centre of the cart, but Gotrek stayed her arm.
‘Wait until they’ll make a difference,’ he said.
Felix looked back at the riders. Now that they were closer, he saw that not all were ancient skeletons. Some still had flesh on their bones, and wore the colours of Plaschke-Miesner or von Kotzebue or von Volgen. He stared, shocked. They must have been knights who had fallen at Tarnhalt’s Crown, but like their bronze-clad comrades, their movements were swift and sure, not the vague stumblings of zombies. Was the necromancer controlling them like puppets, or had he somehow found a way to let them retain the skill they had possessed in life?
‘How does a mad beggar like Hans have such power?’ Felix mumbled.
The cart boomed over an ancient stone bridge that crossed a wide, winding stream. Felix looked around. The castle was closer now, and he could pic
k out details such as spear-tips glinting on the battlements and the yawning arch of its main gate, but it was still too far.
Behind him, the dead riders bounded over the broad stream as if they had wings, then touched down in a spray of mud and surged closer, pushing before them an icy, foetid wind that made Felix shiver with more than just cold.
Gotrek picked up one of the tent poles, nearly as long as a pike and heavier, then stepped to the back of the cart and heaved it like a javelin, straight at the spike-helmed warrior at the front. The rider danced its bone horse to the left and avoided the pole, but it bounced and knocked another dead knight from the saddle. The rest swerved around him and came on.
Snorri laughed. ‘That looks like fun. Snorri wants to try.’
‘Not with one leg, you won’t,’ said Rodi as he and Gotrek picked up more poles. ‘You’ll fall off the cart.’
Snorri sulked. ‘Snorri never gets to do anything.’
Gotrek hurled his next pole low and to the left, and Rodi did the same to the right. They bounced in front of the lead riders, hitting their horses at knee height and sending them crashing neck-first to the turf in an explosion of armour and bones. More crashed down behind them as riders dodged and slammed into each other, but the fallen swiftly vanished behind the blurring hooves of the others, and the dread warriors closed ranks and came on.
Gotrek and Rodi bent to take up new poles, and Felix did the same, grunting at the weight. The long length of oak was an awkward, unwieldy weapon, and he marvelled again at the strength of the dwarfs to have pitched theirs with such ease and accuracy.
As he raised his to vertical the cart bounced and he overbalanced, falling against the side boards. Kat yelped as the pole banged down on the driver’s bench between Geert and Dirk, and Felix lost his grip.
‘Hoy!’ said Geert. ‘Watch it!’
