“Yes,” the old man replied simply.
“Then you’ll know that that’s bad enough when you’re fighting men.” Erikson lowered his voice and leaned forwards conspiratorially. “But imagine how it will be if we break before those things. They will devour us. All of us.”
For the first time the old man looked away. He spat onto the cobbles and sighed.
“You may have a point,” he allowed.
“Then help me to pull this rabble together into something with a chance of surviving on the battlefield. We will stand together or we will die alone. You were a soldier. A sergeant. You must know that.”
“I do indeed, captain,” the old man replied. His voice was heavy with sarcasm, and the salute he gave when pushing himself off the wall was sloppy enough to be an insult. Erikson didn’t mind. He returned it with a click of his heels and a perfectly executed thump to his own chest which could have come straight from a military manual.
“Glad to hear it, sergeant,” he said, his voice once more loud enough to echo. “You’ll keep your old rank of course. What’s your name?”
“Alter, captain,” he replied, forgetting to inject a note of sarcasm into his voice this time.
“Very well, Sergeant Alter,” Erikson said, voice booming. “Fall the men into six ranks, if you would be so kind.”
And in that moment it seemed that about twenty years rolled off the slopes of Alter’s shoulders and evaporated from the cynical depths of his eyes. When he went to address his comrades it was with the aggressive, game-cock confidence of the born NCO.
Erikson watched him work with a mixture of approval and relief. He heckled and cajoled and persuaded the men into the beginnings of their first formation, and he did it with consummate skill, knowing who to encourage and who to coerce. One little knot of men in particular seemed unwilling to join the formation.
“You can play at bloody soldiers if you want to,” said their leader. “All I want is out.”
Alter’s range of expressions wouldn’t have shamed a pantomime. Disbelief turned to horror which just as rapidly turned to rage. He leant forwards with the barely controlled aggression of a fighting dog on a leash, strong yellow teeth bared as he stepped so close to his recalcitrant recruit that the man was forced to take a step backwards, then another. He stopped when he was pressed up to the wall.
“Listen carefully,” Alter told him, although the volume was such that only a deaf man could have misheard. “I want you in the front rank, facing the gate and standing in whatever approximation to attention you can manage. If you don’t I will tear off your head. I will piss down your neck. And I will enjoy doing it.”
The man swallowed nervously and looked at his companions for encouragement. There was none to be had. They were already sidling away towards the ragged formation that was taking shape almost as though they had been meaning to all along.
“Why aren’t you moving?” Alter’s voice was so high-pitched that it was almost a scream. “Go. Go, go, go.”
Whether it was because of the desertion of his comrades or the insane glitter in his persecutor’s eyes, the man went. Alter hurried along until he broke into a run. By then those who weren’t already standing in one of the lines were trying to find their positions. Nobody wanted to be the next to be chased around the yard.
It took another five minutes, and as Erikson watched he remembered an old bow maker who had plied his trade in some other war. He had spent his days patiently working the knots out of dried sinews so that he could separate the threads and then weave them back into a whole. Alter, it seemed, had a similar skill, and by the time he had finished the rabble of convicts had been transformed into something that could loosely be described as six ranks.
“Thank you, sergeant,” he said as Alter evened out the last two lines. In time he would choose section leaders for each group of ten, but for now all he wanted was to be able to keep them in one group.
“A good beginning, gentlemen,” he told them, and he meant it. Already some were starting to look like soldiers. Not many, it was true, but it was a start. “Today we will go to find our new quarters. Does anybody know where Fish Market Square is?”
“I do, captain,” an enthusiastic voice rang out, and Erikson wasn’t surprised to see the red-headed youngster who had been so keen to fight yesterday.
“What’s your name, soldier?” Erikson asked him, and the lad’s pigeon chest swelled with pride at being addressed thus.
“It’s Randolf, captain, although everybody calls me Dolf. And I can lead you to Fish Market Square, no problem.”
“Good man,” Erikson told him. “Secondly, is anybody hungry?”
This time there was a much more enthusiastic chorus, and Erikson grinned.
“Then we will march first to the armoury then to the store house, then to our quarters. Then we will eat. And when I say march, I mean march. How’s that done, Sergeant Alter?”
“By the left, captain,” Alter bellowed.
“Instruct them, if you would be so kind.”
And so, in the gloomy confines of their prison yard, Sergeant Alter put the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig through its first drill.
Chapter Five
They had been assembled in a forest of tall birches. It was a good place. The trees towered up in cathedral columns into the high canopy above, and the ground between the mighty trunks was relatively free of undergrowth. Beams of dappled sunlight played across the detritus which lay on the ground. It flitted over the creatures which had assembled below as tirelessly as the swarms of buzzing flies which accompanied them.
Despite the heat of the summer it remained cool in this shadowed place, and Gulkroth was pleased. The flesh he had devoured had filled him out and thickened his fur to an unseasonable bulk, and he often found himself panting, long red tongue rolled out between the sharpness of his fangs.
But if he had grown in size he had also grown in other, more disturbing ways. The red of his eyes now glowed even in the light of the sun, and the glorious, liquid stink of his musk was enough to overwhelm even the proudest of his kind.
A hundred grovelled before him now, horns lowered in supplication and tails curling up between their goat legs. Behind them beasts of a purer form waited. These had none of the cursed taint of humanity about them. They were four-legged and thick-snouted. Vicious horns curled extravagantly from the thick bones of their skulls, and they bore tusks even bigger than those carried by the sweet-fleshed but vicious-natured boars which also inhabited the forest.
What was striking about the creatures was not their wholesome animal appearance. It was the contraptions into which they had been harnessed.
There was something about them which filled Gulkroth with an instinctive, unreasoning rage. A growl rose unbidden within the depths of his throat as he studied them, and the creatures which grovelled before him pressed themselves even lower down into the dirt of the forest floor.
Their lord calmed himself, although his feeling of disgust remained. It pained him to see the wild wood of the forest sawn and sectioned into ordered construction. It pained him even more to see the wheels. Of all of man’s devices this was one of the most repellent in its precision and symmetry.
And yet they are useful, Gulkroth thought, forcing himself to reason with the same vicious persistence with which a man will flog an exhausted horse. If only such noble beasts were not beholden to them.
He prowled over to where one of the quadrupeds stood between the traces of its chariot. It had a vicious glint to its eye and the long, chipped horns of an animal that has killed often and well. Although it weighed perhaps half a ton it whimpered in terror at Gulkroth’s approach.
The lord looked at it, and in that moment the animal fell calm, mesmerised by his awful presence. Gulkroth turned back to look at the two-legged beasts who cowered before their mounts.
“Who thought to build these things?” he asked, the snarl of his voice shredding through the last of their composure. None answered altho
ugh slowly, like fleas leaving a corpse, the herd sidled away to abandon one of their brothers. Soon he was alone in a circle of isolation.
Gulkroth waited for the miserable creature to raise its head. The proud curls of its horns and the bovine bulges of its muscle were in sharp contrast to its eyes. They darted hither and thither, as panicked as rats in a cage.
Then it hit Gulkroth. With an urge that came as suddenly as a flash of summer lightning he despised the taint of humanity in this creature as much as he despised it in himself. With a bellow of animal rage he sprang forwards and, disdaining the device of his axe, he seized the creature’s horns and lifted it from the ground.
It struggled for its survival, all deference gone as it gouged at its lord with sharp hooves. Gulkroth ignored its pathetic attack as he twisted the head back from the dangling body and took a deep, tearing bite out of its neck. His teeth sheared through muscle and bone, artery and cartilage, and even as its black blood spurted out over its lord’s face the creature’s head was torn from its still-struggling body.
Gulkroth licked the blood from his muzzle and turned back to his victim’s cowering brethren.
“I have seen these things before,” he growled. “Keep them well maintained. When the time comes, I will hurl you into the enemy and you will smash him. Then we shall all feast on meat even sweeter than that of our own kind. Do you understand?”
There was an immediate yapping chorus of assent and Gulkroth, enjoying the taste of their leader’s blood even as he regretted giving in to the impulse to kill him, turned back to the sprawling anthill of the main encampment.
It was incredible that the humans, flat-faced and weak though they were, hadn’t been able to smell their approach. Their city lay less than two days’ march to the west, and it seemed inconceivable that they couldn’t yet taste the glorious stench of his mighty herd.
It was a miasma born of stale musk and suppurating wounds and rotten meat and trampled dung. It greased the air for miles around, and was why the only animals that approached were the flies. Swarms of them, fat and satiated, buzzed around the camp in a constant cloud. They crawled over everything, paying homage to the blood in which the herd had bathed. They even crawled over Gulkroth, although those which lingered had a tendency to swell up and die, falling from his hide like rotten figs.
The lord inhaled the heady perfume as he prowled around his herd. The smells of life and the smells of death mingled together within the caverns of his nostrils, and he revelled in the joy of existence. To fight. To kill. To dominate.
Life!
He passed Viles and his brothers, horse-bodied and as swift as the northern wind. He had used them to find this place, and he would use them tomorrow to scout forwards. His mouth watered at the thought of all the humans who awaited him, plump and juicy behind their walls. What a slaughter it would be, he thought, and bared his fangs in a grimace of pleasure that sent a quiver of unease running through even his own guards.
“My lord.” The voice was as hoarse as winter winds through withered trees.
Gulkroth turned and looked down to see Ruhrkar. He was bent almost double, and the patches of fur that remained on his wrinkled hide were as white as bone. Insects buzzed around the fluid which wept from his eyes, and when he spoke he revealed fangs that were little more than rotting stumps.
Only his horns gave any hint of what he once might have been. They had grown grotesque with time, and now the bulk of them weighed his aged head down so that he walked with a permanent stoop.
It was unusual for any of the herd to reach such an age. In the normal course of things such a weakling, even if he survived the rigours of the forest, would have long since been devoured by younger, stronger members of his herd.
But Ruhrkar was not normal.
Far from it.
“Ruhrkar.” Gulkroth acknowledged the withered old creature, who returned his gaze with rheumy eyes. He was one of the few creatures left that could still meet his eyes, but Gulkroth didn’t mind. It was resignation he saw in old Ruhrkar’s eyes, not defiance.
“My lord, I have grave news.”
Gulkroth waited. His visions, even since he had touched the stone, had never been the match of Ruhrkar’s. That was another reason the ancient was still alive.
“Tomorrow is the wrong time for battle. We must wait for the rising of the Chaos Moon. We are children of Khorne. The time for us to do battle is at the time of the holy slaughter, when the Chaos Moon bathes the land green and our power is at its strongest. Such is the way it has always been.”
Gulkroth regarded the ancient shaman. If there had been the slightest scent of fear or defiance about him then Gulkroth would have killed him, sorcerer or no. But there was nothing. Nothing but the calm disinterest of a creature which no longer feels attached to this world.
“Have you seen it?” he asked. “Have you seen our defeat?”
“No,” Ruhrkar answered with a shrug. “But that doesn’t matter. We are not supposed to fight tomorrow.”
Gulkroth thought about the ten thousand beasts he had hidden amongst these trees. Each one of them was a wild thing, born to be free. They were bound together with nothing but a hunger for destruction, and the strength of his will. Although none realised it, the hold he had over them was as fragile as the gossamer threads which drifted in the canopy above.
“We cannot delay,” he decided, then took a step forwards so that the shaman’s scrawny throat was just a claw-reach away. “If you tell anybody what you have told me, I will have you killed one piece at a time.”
Ruhrkar shrugged.
“It is as it should be,” he said, turned the bony column of his back and ambled away. Gulkroth was considering snapping the withered creature in two when, from the east, there came a shriek. The cry was sharp enough to cut through the hubbub of the packed forest, and it was followed by a deep-throated bellow that could almost have been laughter.
Gulkroth’s nostrils twitched, disturbing the flies that had been crawling over them, then grunted with satisfaction. Even through the stink of the camp, he recognised the scent of the newcomers. It was as clear as the avalanche rumble of their voices and the screams of their victims.
So, they were here. Something that might once have been called fear lifted the fur on the back of Gulkroth’s neck, and he unconsciously widened his shoulders and expanded his chest as he turned towards the newcomers. It was time to teach them who their new lord was.
Hefting his axe he stalked eagerly towards them, his blood already aflame with the instinct to dominate.
“Is this a joke?” Viksberg asked, holding a handkerchief to his nose.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Erikson told him, although he did. In the last two days they had worked hard, but however convincingly the company stood to attention there was no mistaking them for a regiment.
No regiment would have tolerated such a mismatch of ragged clothes, or allowed such bony and malnourished men to join. Nor would it have tolerated the bizarre mixture of weapons with which the men were armed. They seemed more like the contents of an eccentric’s collection than of an arsenal. Halberds, spears, axes, cutlasses, even hunting bows were present amongst the ranks.
Viksberg regarded them suspiciously. At first he had been relieved to have been assigned to the provost marshal’s staff rather than to a field command, but every time he met his new commander his paranoia grew. Steckler knew something, he was sure of it. The suspicion was always there, clear as day within his little piggy peasant’s eyes.
As Viksberg inspected the ragged men before him, the idea that this was some vast practical joke was growing.
“You,” he said and pointed to a man with ragged blond hair and twinkling blue eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Porter, your lordship. My mother always liked the name, she told me, ever since she was a little girl. And what with my father being such a kind-hearted man he agreed to let her call me that. Decent of her, don’t you think, your honour?”
; Viksberg glared at the man, who smiled cheerfully back.
“What is that in your belt?”
“A ladle, your lordship,” the man said as though this was the most natural thing in the world.
“This man is the company cook, colonel,” Erikson explained, and contrived to move Viksberg along the line. The next man loomed over both of them. The double-handed sword which rested over his shoulder had a blade as big as a guillotine’s.
“And who are you?” Viksberg asked.
“Who?” the man asked.
“You,” Viksberg snapped. “Who are you?”
“Brandt. I’m his mate.”
“That’s me he’s talking about, your worship,” Porter explained helpfully. “He helps me with the cooking. Chopping things up and whatnot.”
“Yes, thank you, Porter,” Erikson told him, and all but pushed Viksberg further down the line. He next stopped in front of the solid figure of Gunter, who had the shaved head and dark robes of a warrior priest. He had the stern, judgemental gaze of one, too, and Viksberg tried not to quail beneath it.
“This is Gunter,” Erikson said proudly. “He was a Sigmarite priest before he joined up.”
Viksberg muttered something, uncorked his silver flask and drank deeply. He was trying not to think about the sisters who had died in the fire as he avoided Gunter’s steady gaze and walked quickly down the line.
“And this,” Erikson said, catching him up, “is our drummer. Every regiment needs a musician, don’t you agree?” he asked with forced bonhomie.
But Viksberg suddenly seemed beyond speech. The flask fell from his fingers to ring out on the cobbles, and his mouth gaped open in a perfect circle of shock.
Dolf, scrawnier than usual behind the fat tube of his drum, looked equally horrified. This was the arsonist, of that he had no doubt. The arsonist who had framed him.
“Are you all right, colonel?” Erikson asked, reaching out to touch Viksberg’s shoulder. The man jumped as if he’d been shot and swivelled around, a look of terror in his eyes. Then he swallowed, rubbed his hands on the front of his tunic and stooped to pick up his flask. It had gurgled empty on the cobbles and he pocketed it absent-mindedly.
[Warhammer] - Broken Honour Page 7
