Then Brandt stood up and their roar of impatience turned into one of approval. He basked in their support, bowing low, then he leapt down into the churned earth of the ring. He landed neatly on the balls of his feet, lifted his fists above his head and bellowed a challenge.
It was met by the jeers of the crowd, and then all eyes turned to the wagon that was being backed down an earthen ramp and into the ring. It lurched from side to side, and as the crowd quietened the maddened howls of the beast within could be heard.
“Remember,” Porter said, darting forwards to give a last piece of advice, “cut and run as soon as you like. You don’t need to win this one.”
Brandt ignored him. He could feel terror coiling within him, but he could also feel the berserker joy which had carried him through a lifetime of bloodshed. His fists were bound, but so were the jaws of the beast he would fight.
To the hells with Porter, he decided. He would leave this ring victorious.
The wagon had come to a rest in the pit, and Walder’s men attached ropes to the rear doors. With a last, pitying look at Brandt they leapt out of the ring and jerked the doors open.
The beast blurred into the ring, its hooves tearing up divots of bloodstained earth as it arrowed towards Brandt. The crowd fell almost silent as he leapt away from the beast’s onslaught, and although he was quick he wasn’t quick enough. It caught hold of him and lunged forwards, then tumbled back as it reached the end of its chain.
Brandt tumbled back too, and tried not to think about the panic that fluttered within him.
It wasn’t just that the beast was so big, standing a full head taller than him. Nor was it the powerful bulge of its jaws because, true to his word, Walder had fastened them within an iron muzzle.
No, what scared Brandt was the blind hatred in the beast’s eyes. He could almost feel it burning into him as it strained at the limit of its chain, choking on its collar and making the wagon it was tethered to jump.
The crowd, which had been stunned into silence, suddenly found its voice again. Soon the babble of catcalls and voices resolved itself into a chant, a savage metronome beaten out with stamping feet and clashing weapons.
“Kill it,” the crowd demanded with a single, atavistic voice. “Kill, kill.”
Brandt felt his courage return.
“After all,” he told himself as he lunged forwards, “it’s only an animal.”
And so it was. When it turned it was with the speed of a serpent, and when it swiped him across the face with outstretched claws it felt as though he had been mauled by a lion. Brandt staggered back, blood blinding him in one eye and his ears ringing with the impact.
The beast roared with irritation as the chain once more prevented it from pursuing its prey. It grabbed hold of the metal and turned back to try to tear it free.
Brandt, who had learned to fight in the Empire’s slums, moved with an unerring instinct towards his opponent’s back. He drew back his fist and drove a left hook straight into its kidneys.
It felt like punching an oaken barrel. A man would have been crippled by the blow but the beast just spun around, its chains forgotten in the face of the assault. It lunged at Brandt, fangs gnashing impotently behind the cage of its muzzle, but to the crowd’s horrified delight the same muzzle struck Brandt square on the forehead. He fell, his face a sheet of blood, and rolled aside as a hoof stamped down towards him.
Ignoring the weight of the impact which had been behind the kick, Brandt drove his foot into the tendons behind the beast’s re-curved knee. It grunted and staggered away, and Brandt seized the opportunity to stagger to his feet and stumble out of his enemy’s reach.
This time the crowd were less supportive. As the beast hurled itself against the restriction of its chain, they started hurling abuse at Brandt for his lack of fighting spirit. His comrades hurled abuse back, and there were already some scuffles breaking out in the stalls. In the midst of it he could see Porter waving a white scarf in a signal for him to leave the ring. Beside him Alter, by contrast, waved his fist in encouragement.
Brandt scooped up a handful of dirt. He used it to staunch the bleeding, spat out a tooth and moved back in towards his enemy.
This time, instead of pouncing, he danced around the beast, goading it until he had worked out the exact reach of its chain. Only then did he move in, tapping away at it with fast jabs before jumping out of range. It grunted with frustration as it fought to retaliate, but now that Brandt had got the measure of it he didn’t give it a chance.
He ducked in.
He landed a jab.
He ducked out.
The crowd, its sporting instincts outraged by this unfair tactic, began to grow ever more belligerent. Brandt had just landed a neat blow on the beast’s wrist when the first turf of earth was thrown. It landed between the two combatants harmlessly, but already a new fashion was sweeping the makeshift stadium and suddenly the air was filled with flying debris.
Brandt staggered back to safety, his arms raised against the missiles. His opponent reacted more strongly. When a tossed bottle landed with a crack on its horns it turned, roared with rage and charged the spectators. It leapt up onto the side of the fighting pit and crawled forwards.
The chain tightened again and it fell back into the ring, but by now it no longer mattered. The ferocity of its charge had been enough to start a stampede that spread throughout the gathered spectators with a terrible urgency. Where moments before men had been chanting and jeering and drinking, now they were in full flight.
Darkness added to the confusion and, as a hundred men tried to climb a single ladder at the same time, a torch was knocked into a bale of straw. Soon flames were roaring up into the night, and within minutes the makeshift stadium was ablaze.
The development did little to calm the panicking spectators.
“Come on, you damn fool!”
Brandt swung around, fists raised against the man who had grabbed his shoulder. Then he realised that it was Porter.
“I had him,” he said and Porter, who had begun to fear just that, swept an arm around the flame-lit chaos around them.
“We’ve got more important things to worry about than that,” he said. “Like surviving, for instance.”
Brandt grunted and, with a last look back at his opponent, turned and followed the rest of the company as they made their escape.
“Doesn’t look good, does it, Erikson?” the provost marshal said. Erikson, who had been escorted to the palace by a dozen guards, merely examined the brim of his hat and tried not to think too much about his surroundings. He had never been in the dungeon before, and even though he remained free, the manacles that hung from the walls in this chamber seemed a little more than coincidental.
“Over a dozen deaths in all,” the provost marshal glanced down at the sheet before him, “and a hundred men injured. The fire also destroyed the stores of three regiments, and scattered a corral full of horses that we are still chasing now. Tell me, Erikson. Do you work for the enemy?”
“Of course not, provost marshal,” Erikson said. “Nor do I understand why you have brought me here.”
“Because,” Steckler said, “your company caused this… this devastation. We’ve lost a day’s march because of you. A day’s march! Do you have any idea how important a day’s march can be in a war?”
“Some idea,” Erikson said, his temper rising. “Is it more important than finding scapegoats for accidents?”
“Don’t take that line with me,” Steckler roared and slammed his fist onto a table. “The witch hunters are already in a lather about enemy infiltrators and some killing in the potters’ quarter. Perhaps you’d like to talk to them?”
“Not at all, provost marshal,” Erikson said. “My point is that it is unfair to blame my company.”
“Are you denying that it was them who staged this fight? Are you denying that one of your men, and I can hardly believe this myself, was boxing with a beastman?”
“I’m sure the event wasn�
�t organised by them,” Erikson said. “Apart from anything else, they haven’t had the time.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard. In fact, Viksberg has collected statements from over two dozen men who will swear that your company was responsible for the event.”
“Viksberg,” Erikson said the name with such disgust that Steckler paused.
“I don’t care what you think of the man, these statements are genuine. I had them checked. And your man was fighting a beast, wasn’t he?”
“I believe it was muzzled,” Erikson began, but Steckler cut him off with a bark of humourless laughter.
“Well that’s all right then,” he said.
Erikson fixed him with a cold glare.
“My men have been fighting the enemy for the past month and more,” he said. “Might I remind you that, before then, they were prisoners in your own gaol, no more than mouths to feed and bodies to guard?”
Steckler met Erikson’s glare with his own. He liked this man. Liked his nerve. He was damned if he was going to let it show, though.
“Yes, about that gaol. Have you told the men that they are only on licence, and that as soon as the war is over they will return to their sentences?”
To his surprise, Erikson felt a shudder of some strange new feeling. It wasn’t fear. Not exactly. Nor was it nausea, or sadness.
“Yes,” Steckler said, seeing that he had made his point. “You do well to look guilty.”
“I was hoping that the men would be freed in consideration of their service,” Erikson said, looking down.
“So I take it that you haven’t told the men their cells are waiting for them?” Steckler twisted the knife, “Or, in several cases, the noose?”
Erikson opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. Understanding dawned, as did disappointment.
“I see. You should have just told me what you were after. I would have offered you a cut, but you didn’t seem the type. How much?”
This time Steckler’s anger was real.
“Don’t insult me, Erikson,” he said, his tone icy cold. “I didn’t bring you down here to blackmail you. Not exactly, anyway. I’ve come here to make you an offer.”
Steckler produced a leather tube, drew a roll of parchment out from within and offered it to Erikson.
“This is a pardon for all crimes committed by you and your company to date, including any involvement you might have had in last night’s events.”
“By Sigmar,” Erikson said, unable to hold back his smile of relief as he read it. “So it is. Thank you!”
“Not so fast,” Steckler said. “You’ll see that it hasn’t been signed yet. That will only happen after you and your men have played your part in the coming battle to my complete, and I do mean complete, satisfaction.”
Erikson ignored his misgivings and nodded happily.
“It will be our pleasure, provost marshal,” he said.
Five minutes later he had come to the conclusion that paying a bribe would have been easier anyway, but by then it was too late.
After feeding, Hofstadter had been overcome with a crippling exhaustion which had laid him low for days. He had found a quiet ledge in a nearby sewer and there he had slept, bloodied and remorseless, as the world above had discovered the horror he had left behind him.
When he awoke the pain in his bones was gone. The only discomfort came from his boots, which seemed to have grown misshapen and ill-fitting. He clawed at the fastenings and tore them off, ripping the stitching apart when they caught on his bone. As he tossed them into the sewer he tapped at his new hooves and realised that he would never need another pair of boots again.
He almost tore off the remains of his clothes too, but some instinct stayed his fingers. The city that squatted down above him was no place for him to reveal his new form. It was full of sharp eyes and sharper steel. He would have to be careful until he was free. Careful and cloaked.
He waited until the beam of light that pierced the crumbling masonry of his hideout faded into dusk. Only then did he slip carefully back out into the city. He had wrapped part of the blanket around his head in a shawl, and the other half trailed into the dirt, its ragged threads hiding the re-knitted bone of his legs and the hardness of his hooves.
Although he stank of fear as well as sewage, the city remained blind to him as he joined its throngs. The acrid stink of countless torches and fires greased the air, and although pressed and jostled by the crowds Hofstadter was just one of a myriad of ragged and crazed refugees. He kept the yellow glimmer of his eyes lowered as he followed the press that led to the city gates, and eventually he was spat out into the encampment beyond.
Here it was even easier to pass unremarked. The campfires barely cast any light beyond the circles of men who huddled around them, and the road between them was an anonymous highway of drunks and thieves and merchants hurrying back to the safety of the city with their day’s takings. Hofstadter ignored them as they ignored him, and soon he was approaching the last few clusters of tents that stood between him and the freedom of the land beyond.
That’s when he smelled it.
He paused, lifted his head and sniffed the air. The flattened rings of his nostrils twitched as he breathed the foetid air in and tasted it. He didn’t have a word for the joy that flowed through him then, nor did he need one.
All he needed to know was that what he could smell was the herd.
With a grunt of happiness Hofstadter quickened his pace and trotted off towards the embrace of his own kind.
Chapter Sixteen
Even Gulkroth was impressed by the number that had gathered within his dominion. They had come from every dark glade and low canyon and hidden fastness in Hochland, and now that he saw them arrayed before him they seemed more swarm than herd. Individuals were indistinguishable in the seething masses that heaved beneath the putrid luminescence of the Chaos Moon’s fattened sphere, and the reek of them greased the air for miles around.
There would certainly be no way for such a throng to find food here. They had already scoured the land for every morsel and that, Gulkroth considered, was a great advantage. He wanted them hungry. No, he wanted them ravenous. He wanted the smell of the man-flesh within the city walls before them to drive them mad with desire.
He watched the walls from the perch he had taken on a great chariot. When he stood upon it he towered above all but the minotaurs, and he could see the defiant lines of the city walls rising above them. Here and there tiny figures of men could be seen scurrying past gaps in the battlements. He fancied that he could smell their terror even through the stink of his host.
When he had arrived at this place his first instinct had been to charge the gates, throwing wave after wave of axe-wielding beasts against it until it had been destroyed. Either that or until the pile of their bodies had formed a rampart.
But then, as a steady stream of scouts brought him tidings of the land beyond, he had reconsidered. The humans’ main force was still strong, and he would need the herd intact to destroy it when it arrived. In particular he wanted to be sure of capturing their lord. The shamans had plans for him. Glorious, terrible plans.
And so, instead of the purity of animal aggression, Gulkroth was making preparations. Even now, with the Chaos Moon wallowing back towards the horizon, the forest behind him was alive with the sound of chopping. Thousands of his followers worked there, their war axes covered in sap instead of blood as they built a forest of siege ladders.
It was a blasphemy, Gulkroth knew, but a necessary one. The shamans had assured him that they would make recompense, but it still made him uncomfortable. The humans would pay in full for forcing him to do this, of that he was sure. He had already sent herds out around the walls to make sure that none escaped his wrath.
He was brooding on such thoughts when instinct suddenly made him look up.
At first there was nothing to see against the glow of the night sky, but soon he saw scraps of movement in the distance and felt the aura of the newcomers. H
e bared his fangs in pleasure as he understood what the creatures were, and bellowed a greeting into the sky.
His bodyguard cringed at the sound of their lord’s voice but the winged creatures fluttered obediently towards him. They landed in before him, thudding down to earth in shadowed tangles of featherless wings and scrawny limbs. Although they had the wings of bats and the talons of raptors they had the bodies of women. Moonlight flowed across the smooth contours of their torsos, revealing them to be as lithe and ripe-breasted as any courtesan. Their faces might almost have been human too if it had not been for the bestial expressions they wore and the long, dagger-sharp fangs they sported.
“Welcome,” Gulkroth said, and they trembled with delicious terror at the chasm-deep timbre of his voice. “From where do you come?”
“Your messenger found us in the cliffs above the forest, great lord,” one them said, its voice a shrill caw. “He bade us come for a great slaughter and so here we are.”
“You will feast before the Chaos Moon wanes,” Gulkroth told them. “But first you will help to prepare the flesh. You will be my voice in the battle to come.”
So saying, he turned and strode through the herd that had gathered around him. It parted before him like a shoal of herring before a shark. His new servants glanced about them nervously as they hopped and scuttled along behind him, their wings folded along their backs. They tried not to look at the beasts which towered above them on all sides. Tried not to notice the hunger and the resentment that glimmered in the dark sockets of their eyes.
“Shamans,” Gulkroth called as he climbed to the top of a fire-blasted hilltop. A coven of the beasts bowed low as he advanced upon them, and the most ancient of them stepped forwards.
“My lord,” Ruhrkar said, his rheumy eyes aglow with the power of the moon above. In its fell light the withered creature had grown in power, his sorcery blossoming like some terrible fruit.
[Warhammer] - Broken Honour Page 27
