[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer
Page 20
“I’m sorry, Sir Teobalt,” said Felix, cringing away. “But it’s the truth.”
“It is not. You lie like a knave.”
“But why should I?”
“I know not. Perhaps to hide some fault of your own. Perhaps you failed to protect Squire Ortwin and now seek to blame him for your lapse. It matters not. You have betrayed my trust. And I will not have you by my side hereafter. Return the sword that you have taken unjustly and go from me.”
The knight held out an imperious hand. Felix hesitated, trembling with frustration. He wanted to try again to get the old templar to listen, but he knew that it would be fruitless. He doubted that even the testimony of Gotrek and Kat and Snorri would change his mind. What Felix had told him had broken the laws of Sir Teobalt’s view of the world, and he would not believe it no matter what.
“Come, varlet,” barked Sir Teobalt, beckoning impatiently. “Will you rob me as well as lie to me? Give me the sword or defend yourself with it.”
After another long moment, Felix sighed and began unbuckling the sword belt from around his waist. “I have told the truth, Sir Teobalt,” he said. “But since I cannot convince you, I will honour our agreement.” He pulled the belt free and wrapped it around the scabbard, then took a last look at the clawed crossguard and dragon-headed pommel of the ancient rune sword. He would miss it. With a catch in his throat, he held it out to the templar.
Sir Teobalt took it and pressed it against his breastplate. He nodded solemnly to Felix. “You have honour at least in this, Herr Jaeger,” he said. “Now go. I would pray.”
Felix bowed as the templar turned to the rebuilt altar, then he sighed and started for the door, his heart sick with regret.
He should have lied.
Two hours later, under a sky of stars and scudding clouds, Felix leaned against the raw pine trunks of the battlements, above and to the right of the village gate, looking dully out at the black wall of the forest that waited in the darkness beyond the flickering bonfires the villagers had set in their fields. The beastmen were out in that darkness somewhere, and as much as he hoped that they would somehow pass them by and leave the village in peace, he also wished they would show up quickly and end the nervous tension that always came with waiting and vanished with action.
Kat sat cross-legged on the narrow walkway beside him, waxing her arrowheads with a candle stub and cutting the feathers at the ends of her shafts so that they were all even. Two nervous village boys knelt near her, watching intently and trying to copy what she did.
“Why do you wax the points?” asked one of the boys. “Do they fly faster that way?”
Kat shook her head. “They slip through skin and armour better. Important with beastmen, as they have tough hides.”
The boys’ eyes widened at this, and they fell to waxing their own arrows with more vigour than skill.
Felix smiled down at her, and it was all he could do to not pull her up to her feet and kiss her then and there. He thought back to the moment when he had seen her fleeing Milo’s wagons, her bare legs flashing as she pounded desperately through the snow. He wasn’t sure why everything had changed then, but it had. All his worries, all his confusion about what he felt had evaporated, and he had known that despite it all, he loved her.
Unworldly yokel she might be, tied to the forest by her vows to save it, and too young for him by a decade. None of it mattered. What did matter was that she was neither a fool nor a manipulator like Claudia had been, nor did she constantly measure him and demand tests of his loyalty and worthiness like Ulrika had done. She neither overvalued or undervalued him, or loved some idea of him concocted from her memories and his f unearned fame. Instead, to his confoundment, she seemed to accept him for who he was, and loved him for it.
She looked up at him, as if she could feel his eyes upon her, and gave him a lopsided smile that went through him as if it were the arrow she held in her hand.
He smiled back, then shook his head as she returned to showing the boys how to cut their fletches. It seemed complete madness to him, but when he looked in her eyes he found that he was ready to love her for as long as the world allowed them both to live, no matter what obstacles might get in their way.
Of course, he thought, looking out towards the vastness of the forest with a sigh, that might not be for very long at all. In fact, it was highly probable that they would both die tonight, no matter how well Gotrek’s strategy worked.
When Felix had returned to the others after giving Karaghul to Teobalt, he had helped them put the plan into action. It had been fairly straightforward. They were making a beastman trap, and baiting it with alcohol. The idea was this. They would hide three of the wagons, leaving in the main intersection only the one that was loaded with barrels of blackpowder. These they would hide under barrels of beer, brandy and gin. When the beastmen came, they would lure them into the centre of the village, let them attack the wagon and try to steal the liquor, then — from a safe distance — fire the powder and blow as many of them as they could to smithereens.
If there were any survivors, Gotrek, Felix and the slayers, as well as Teobalt and whatever villagers they could muster, would finish them off before they recovered from the blast.
Felix was afraid that the blast would blow up the town as well, for Ludeker had amassed quite a little stockpile of powder during his tenure as “protector” of Bauholz, and Milo had crammed every barrel of it onto the wagon. Gotrek assured him that all would be well.
The two structures closest to the intersection were the old strong house and the temple of Sigmar. Both made of stone and, in the Slayer’s words, “solid — at least by human standards.”
A shallow groove had been dug in the frozen earth of the intersection and match cord laid in it from the wagon to the strong house, where the slayers would be hiding. Then a line of planks was laid over the groove, to stop the beastmen from accidentally kicking or tripping over the cords and pulling them from the barrels.
When all had been prepared. Sir Teobalt and Doktor Vinck had directed the townsfolk in their duties. Those who could pull a bow would man the walls. Those that could fight would lie in wait in the temple of Sigmar, and those that could do neither would hide on the second floor of the strong house, with instructions to lock the bottom door and pray once the fighting started.
Gotrek gave Felix and Kat special duties, and sent them to the walls to wait with the archers. Felix could tell that Sir Teobalt wished that Felix would have left town entirely and not participated in such a noble enterprise, but the templar had said nothing, only pretended that Felix wasn’t there.
Felix looked along the wall in the torchlight, sizing up the archers he could see. They didn’t look like much. Their bows were new and well made, taken from the wagons along with their swords and helmets, but they themselves were mostly not of the same quality — a handful of village boys, a dozen refugees from the camp across the river, so starved that their bow staves seemed thicker than their wrists. But among them were a few old soldiers, trapped in town like the rest by recent events. From what Kat had said, the moment she had brought news of the herd, anyone with money or connections or a boat had taken to the river and sped south as quickly as possible, leaving only the poor and desperate behind.
The soldiers looked hardly more well fed than the refugees, but at least they knew their business. One of them, a hunched little man by the name of Weir, who sported a week’s growth of beard and his own bow, had taken charge of the troops on this section of the wall, and was walking up and down the walkway with a profound limp, calling encouragement and cheerful abuse to his ungainly recruits.
“Keep yer bowstring away from the snow, ye daft bug,” he told a boy. “If it gets wet ye won’t be able to shoot five paces,” and, “Can’t bend yer bow, laddie? Are ye a maid? Here now, step through it and bend it across your hip. See it? Strength of Sigmar now, hey?” and, “Don’t stick ’em in the wood, ye lummox! Look ye, that won’t cut yer beard now, will it? How’s
it to get through a beast-man’s scalp? Sharpen ’em again! Sharpen ’em again.” And on and on, keeping their minds away from the waiting and the fear of what was to come.
Felix sighed with uneasy impatience and put his hand on the pommel of his sword, then jerked it away again, surprised once more that he didn’t feel the familiar serrated shape of the dragon head under his palm. He must have done this twenty times already, and still it alarmed and depressed him every time.
He had tried out a score of the swords that had been part of the plunder Milo had loaded on the four wagons, swinging them around and testing their balance, and had finally selected this one as the best of the lot, though really it felt just as wrong in his hand as all the others, He would have to get used to it though, or find a better sword if he ever made it back to civilisation. Karaghul wasn’t his anymore.
It was a very strange feeling. He had had the rune sword almost as long as he had known Gotrek, and in that time it had come to feel as much a part of him as his arm. He felt naked without it — almost amputated. It seemed unfair to have it taken from him like this. He had told the truth. He had done the right thing, and he had been punished for it. And yet there was nothing he could do. Sir Teobalt wasn’t going to give the sword back to him — not unless he changed his mind, and that seemed unlikely. The old templar was hide-bound and stubborn. His faith, and his belief in the incorruptibility of his fellow knights, had blinded him more surely than the loss of his eyes might have done.
From the west wall of the village came a murmur of frightened voices. The archers all turned their heads and whispered questions at each other, then, after a moment, the news worked its way around the corner and the archers stood, snatching up their bows in nervous excitement.
“They’re here!” said one. “The boys on the west wall say they’re circling in the woods.”
“But I’m not done waxing!” bleated another.
“Steady now, steady now,” said Weir. “No need to rush. All the time in the world. String yer bows now, lads. Nice and easy. That’s the way.”
Those that hadn’t, strung their bows, while the rest craned their necks to watch to the west, waiting to see movement beyond the edge of the corner platform.
Felix watched with them as Kat calmly strung her bow and slipped her arrows into a leather quiver at her hip.
The glare of the fires in the fields made it hard to see beyond them, but after a moment he thought he saw a suggestion of movement against the black of the woods — a glint of reflected flame, a ripple of shadow on shadow.
The archers saw it too, and their voices raised to a babble again. Weir, bless him, knew just what to say to calm them.
“There they are, lads. Have ye ever seen such big targets in yer lives? Sigmar, even bug-boy here ought to be able to hit something that size, eh?”
The boys chuckled and their babble subsided.
Felix, on the other hand, was growing uneasier by the second. The beastmen had come a little more into the light as they circled around to the south side of the village, and he could see their numbers now. There were scores of them! The scout had said a hundred. It looked to Felix like there were double that, but perhaps he was letting fear get the better of him.
The beasts were arcing in towards the gate now, and he could see that the first twenty or so carried something heavy between them. For a moment Felix’s heart lurched at the idea that they were bringing some offspring of the giant herdstone to the village and were going to turn them all into beastmen after all, but then he saw that it was only a huge pine-tree, its branches trimmed to hand-hold stubs, and sharpened at its base.
He laughed a little wildly. What a state to come to when you were relieved that the beastmen coming to attack you were carrying only a battering ram.
The fires may have helped those on the wall see the beastmen, but they also made the fiends look more hellish then they already were, painting their fur blood-red and highlighting their cruel horns, their glittering eyes, and the curving teeth in their slavering black mouths.
The village boys whimpered at the sight, and a few of them put arrows on strings and raised their bows, but Weir barked angrily at them. “Not yet, ye damned yokels! Have ye got so many arrows that ye can waste ’em? Wait! Ye see the fires? Well, do ye?”
The archers nodded sullenly, like schoolboys.
“Them fires are set at the edge of bow range,” he scolded. “Ye fire now and ye’ll hit naught but snow. Wait until they come past ’em, and then go on my word, aye?”
“Aye,” murmured his charges in return.
“Good,” said Weir. “Now start to pick out yer targets. Pick a big one. The biggest one ye can see. These beasts, ye see, they follow the strongest. And if ye kill the leaders, the rest are lost and that much easier to beat. Have ye got a target?”
“Aye,” said the archers, more confident now.
“Good!” cried Weir. “Then keep an eye on him, and listen for my call.”
The archers watched the beastmen in silence as they came. They were halfway between the tree line and the line of bonfires now, and coming fast, a jostling swarm of hulking monsters that strung out behind the ram-carriers in a long fanning tail.
“Wait for it!” cried Weir. “Wait for it.”
Felix felt Kat’s hand slip into his and give it a squeeze. He looked around at her and found her smiling up at him. He smiled back and returned her squeeze, then turned away. The thought that it might be the last smile he ever received from her nearly choked him, and he didn’t want her to see the fear in his eyes.
Finally the beastmen carrying the felled pine trotted between two of the bonfires.
“Fire!” bellowed Weir. “Cut them down!”
The archers raised their bows and loosed their arrows. It was a pathetic volley. Only Kat and Weir and a few of the other soldiers hit their marks. Most of the refugees and the village boys put their shafts in the snow. Some of their arrows failed to leave the bow, and they howled from stung fingers and wrists.
“Clumsy fools!” shouted Weir. “Take it slow. Nock. Draw. Aim. Fire. And aim for their heads if you would hit their chests. Now fire!”
The boys tried again as Kat and the other trained archers fired at will, loosing five shafts to every one of theirs. Kat was concentrating on the gors carrying the battering ram, and had dropped the front three in six shots. More ran up to take their places and she rained shafts on them as well.
The biggest of the beastmen had fallen as well, pin-cushioned by a dozen arrows.
“All right, lads, all right,” said Weir, laughing. “He’s down. Now pick another.”
Kat grinned. “The only good thing about beastmen,” she said to Felix out of the side of her mouth, “is that they don’t fire back. Imagine these boys trying to fire while ducking.”
Felix smiled, though he was secretly glad no one had asked him to take up a bow. She would be laughing at him then.
As they continued to fire, the village boys got more confident and their aim improved. Now at least their arrows were falling among the beastmen and not in front of them.
Unfortunately, the gors came so swiftly that the lads hadn’t time for more than a few volleys before they were at the gates, and despite the help of Kat and the other trained archers, less than a score had fallen.
“Fall back!” called Weir, as the ram boomed against the great wooden doors. “To your second positions!”
The boys and the refugees lowered their bows and scurried for the ladders as Kat and a few of the other archers took final shots, sinking arrows to the fletching in necks and the tops of bestial heads as they shot straight down.
“Come on, Kat,” said Felix nervously. “We’ve got a job to do, remember.”
“Just one more,” said Kat, then “Ha!” as she let fly a final time.
Then they were dropping down the ladders after the other archers and pounding up the street to the barricade that the villagers had built between the first two houses of the village.
“Arrows on strings, lads,” said Weir, as they watched the wooden doors shudder and flex in the torchlight. “Two volleys and run again. No heroes here, aye?”
A splintering crack drowned out the archers’ response. The bar had snapped and the beastmen were surging in, shouldering the doors aside and roaring in triumph.
Felix’s stomach churned as they raced towards him, and he suddenly feared that the plan wasn’t going to work. What could stop such a savage onslaught?
It seemed that the archers felt the same way, for only Kat and a few others fired. The rest just sat and stared, like rabbits before a wolf.
“Fire, curse you! Fire!” roared Weir, shooting into the stampede.
The villagers and refugees snapped out of their funk and fired, but poorly, and there was no time for a second volley. They had left it too long.
“Run!” shouted Weir.
The archers needed no further encouragement. They turned and fled down the street as fast as they could. Felix and Kat snatched up torches placed at the barricade just for the purpose and ran after them. Felix almost choked as he took a breath. The street reeked of spilled brandy — the breadcrumbs that would lead the gors to the trap if all else failed.
It seemed unnecessary at the moment. As Gotrek had predicted, the beastmen chased the fleeing villagers with murder in their savage eyes, leaping the barricade and closing the gap with frightening speed.
As they neared the village’s main intersection, Weir looked back and waved his arms. “Scatter! Scatter! To your third positions!”
Now was Felix and Kat’s moment. As the archers broke left and right, dodging into the shadowed yards between the little houses, Felix and Kat continued forwards, waving their torches and shouting insults over their shoulders. It was imperative that the gors follow them and not split up to hunt down the fleeing archers.