by Death
Good to be at war again.
A wolfish grin lifted the waxed blades of his moustaches as he turned to survey his ramshackle army. It had taken him a week to raise it, and although he could have probably found more followers, he had decided that time was of the essence.
As it was he had almost two hundred men. Two hundred farmhands, fishermen and others. Many were the vassals of his friends. Others were freed men who owed their lands to his family’s generosity. Some were mercenaries; bandits who welcomed the opportunity to do a bit of respectable robbery.
Although they marched in time, their footsteps were the only uniform thing about them. They looked more like a collection of scarecrows than the regiment the Baron had once commanded, but he didn’t mind. He was an old enough soldier to know that you fought with what you had, and his instinct told him that what he had was enough.
He turned back to gaze upon Vistein. It lay below him, snug in the inlet in which it had been built and secure behind the granite of its walls. The Baron felt that old thrill of doubt that always attended the translation of a plan into reality. Then he turned to the man riding beside him.
‘Lift the banner,’ he said, and for the first time in a decade Vistein’s coat of arms unfurled in the breeze. It was faded with age and stained with the blood of countless battlefields, but it was bright enough to set a light blazing in an old man’s heart.
The Baron raised a mailed fist to signal the advance, and his column moved down towards the gates.
‘I wonder if the advance party have done their job, your lordship?’ Aukshanks asked. The Baron turned and winked at his old comrade.
‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. ‘Remember what happened in Eisenberg?’
‘Yes,’ Aukshanks smiled at the memory. ‘I’m trying to remember that, and not what happened at Waldstein.’
The Baron barked with laughter.
‘Never mind,’ he said gleefully. ‘We’re in Sigmar’s hands now.’
But if his life was in Sigmar’s hands, the Baron now saw, at least the gates were in his. The dozen men he had sent ahead had done their work. The gates remained open, and behind the cordon his men had formed beneath the arch of it, the Baron could see their bundled captives.
The Baron drew himself even higher up in his saddle as he led his men through the gates. Some of the town’s citizens fled. Others, knowing what was good for them, started to cheer. The Baron removed his helmet and waved to them.
‘Now, let’s go and have a word with the Provost Marshal,’ he said, and led his column towards the crumbling walls of the palace.
They were no more than fifty yards from the palace when, without warning, the air was suddenly threaded with a lethal steel blur of crossbow bolts.
‘Ambush!’ the Baron cried. He unsheathed his sabre with a flourish and looked eagerly around for his attackers. His horse jittered beneath him as he squinted, searching for the enemies who had so sportingly presented themselves.
Behind him, his followers milled about in confusion as another volley of quarrels hissed towards them. The Baron frowned as he heard the first screams of pain from behind him.
‘Look there,’ Aukshanks told him. ‘They’re hiding in the houses on the right, firing from the upper windows.’
The Baron squinted through the beginnings of cataracts. It was the movement he saw, a glitter of steel as the third volley raked through his men.
He turned back to them and scowled. Any semblance of a military formation was long gone. Instead they clustered uncertainly around their fallen comrades. The Baron may have been half-blind, but a lifetime of war had given him the ability to sense when confusion was starting to give way to panic. Well, he couldn’t have that.
He made a decision.
‘You men,’ the Baron bellowed. ‘Yes, all of you! Get into those houses. Break down the doors. Kill anybody with a weapon.’
Still his men, few of whom had ever killed another human, hesitated. With a roar of frustration the Baron spurred his horse and rode down the line. He circled his sabre above their heads in a gesture that was half encouragement and half threat.
‘Attack!’ he cried, his voice drowning out the hiss of yet another lethal volley. ‘Attack!’
And suddenly the Baron’s rage set his ragtag army alight. With a desperate cheer they hurled themselves at the buildings which sheltered their ambushers. They chopped their way through doors and smashed their way through windows. Here an entire wattled wall caved in, and soon the screams of the inhabitants could be heard above the splinter of timber.
Then the first cries of victory as the ambushers found themselves cornered and cut down.
The Baron listened to the screaming women and children who the battle was now being fought amongst. Here and there bodies were hurled through windows. Some of them wore the washed-out black uniforms of the Lord Provost’s men. Most of them wore no uniforms at all.
Well, that couldn’t be helped.
It wasn’t until the sounds of combat gave way to the cruel laughter and delighted cries of looting that the Baron judged the engagement won. He bullied those he could back into the ranks and led them up to the palace.
By now the doors, heavy oak dark beneath centuries of polish, were locked. The Baron dismounted, strode over to the doors, and banged on them with his mailed fist.
‘Open up,’ he cried. ‘Open up in the name of the true Lord Provost.’
There was no reply. He hadn’t expected there to be.
No matter.
‘Bring fuel,’ he said, ‘and fire.’
After the first two days, Florin and Lorenzo had started to think about escape. Alone in a windowless cell, their lives lit by a single candle, there wasn’t much else to do.
They had considered bribery, although since their copper had been confiscated, they didn’t consider it worth trying. They thought about taking a guard hostage, but the guards had obviously thought about that too, which was why they never entered the cell. Instead food was shoved in through a slit in the iron door.
Eventually they had decided that the only way out was to dig, and so they had set about the mortar, crumbling it up and disposing of it through the open sewer which served as their latrine. By the end of the week they had managed to loosen enough of the stones to discover that there was nothing beyond but the sheer rock of the cliff face.
That’s when the arguments had started.
It was in the middle of one of these arguments that they were rudely interrupted.
The door was flung open and the guards threw a plump man into the cell. He looked vaguely familiar.
‘Traitors,’ the plump man yelled at the guards, although not until after they had shut the door. ‘Dogs! The Elector Count will have you hung for this!’
The effort of his invective seemed to exhaust him. After a nervous glance at Florin and Lorenzo he retreated to a corner and sat down on the hard stone, his face in his hands.
The two Bretonnians, their quarrel forgotten, examined their new companion. Even in the candlelight, it was obvious that his torn clothes had been finely made. The velvet of his jacket alone was worth a good horse. He also had the clear skin and chubby features of a man who had lived well, and his fingers were bruised where rings had obviously been forcefully removed.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Florin said.
‘Leave me alone,’ the man squeaked, and looked at his two fellow inmates with wide, fearful eyes. ‘I’ve got nothing left to steal.’
‘Nor do we,’ Florin said, ‘so we should all get along fine. Are you thirsty? We’ve got some clean water left in the jug.’
The man ran a hand through his well-cut hair and a look of pathetic gratitude spread across his face.
‘I am damnably thirsty, yes. Thank you.’
Florin took the jug and, moving slowly so as not to alarm the man, walked over to him and stooped to pass it to him. As he did so the candle lit his face, and he smiled reassuringly.
‘Thank you so much,’ the man sa
id, taking the jug and emptying it in one, long swallow. ‘You’re very kind. In fact, you look a little familiar. What’s your name?’
‘Florin d’Artaud,’ Florin said and, making up with formality for what he lacked in facilities, he executed a perfect bow.
But the new prisoner was beyond such niceties.
‘You!’ he cried, and suddenly he looked not so much like a beaten dog as an enraged wolf. ‘You! It’s all your fault.’
Before Florin could decide how to handle this outbreak of lunacy, the man swung the clay jug at his head in a clumsy, round house swing.
‘Hey,’ Florin said, springing easily out of his reach.
‘You ruined me. You
You
‘ the man’s mouth worked as he fought to find adequate words. Finally he gave up his attempt at speech and charged at Florin, podgy fists flailing.
Florin reacted instinctively, jabbing his thumbs into the nerves on either side of his assailant’s neck and then kneeing him in the stomach.
The man fell backwards onto the floor, then backed away until he reached the wall.
‘What in Ranald’s name is wrong with you, you lunatic?’ Florin demanded.
‘You are what’s wrong with me,’ the other man yelled, and although he was still mottled with rage at least he made no further attempt at violence.
‘Gentlemen,’ Lorenzo said, finally standing up between the two glaring men. ‘I can see that you haven’t been properly introduced. Florin d’Artaud, meet the Provost Marshal of Vistein. Provost Marshal, Monsieur d’Artaud.’
‘Oh,’ Florin said. ‘I see.’
Hearing his title seemed to have a pacifying effect on the Provost Marshal. His rage evaporated and he slumped back, defeated once more.
‘She talked you into it, I suppose?’ He asked hopelessly.
Florin cautiously sat down too.
‘Who?’
‘Adora, of course,’ the Provost Marshal said. ‘That stupid, scheming bitch.’
‘That’s no way to talk about the Lady Adora,’ Florin told him, and was rewarded with a look of absolute contempt. The contempt disintegrated into a miserable frown, which finally melted into sobs.
Florin and Lorenzo sat and watched the fat man cry.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Florin said, ‘is what we have to do with you being in here. I mean, whatever we might have said to the Lady Adora, we didn’t actually kill anybody.’
For a moment it looked as though the Provost Marshal was about to fly into another rage. Instead he leaned back against the grimy wall of his gaol and sighed.
‘I know you didn’t kill him, you fool,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m in here. Because you told that old lunatic the Baron that I wanted him dead, he decided to come and take the town back. It’s so unfair. Apart from anything else, I didn’t want him dead. I was going to sell my corn, ask him to take the lousy title back, and then take a ship to Estalia before everybody found out how bad things are. It’s nice in Estalia,’ he added ‘Sunny. But would Adora listen to reason? Oh no, she just had to be Lady stinking Vistein. I don’t know why I offered to marry her. I must have been mad.’
Florin was no longer listening.
‘That’s fantastic news,’ he told the Provost Marshal, who looked at him blankly. ‘If the Baron is in charge, we’ll be freed. Didn’t I tell you not to worry, Lorenzo?’
‘Yes,’ said Lorenzo, who was gnawing his lip.
‘Didn’t I tell you that the Lady would provide?’
‘By the way,’ Lorenzo ignored him and turned to the Provost Marshal. ‘How is the Lady Adora?’
‘Oh, she’ll be all right,’ the man said bitterly. ‘She always is.’
‘Cheer up,’ Florin told him. ‘We’ll put in a good word for you. The Baron is a reasonable man.’
The thoughtful silence that followed lasted until the next day. Then another day passed.
And another.
By the end of the week Florin and Lorenzo were as close to losing hope as the Provost Marshal himself was. But before they could, the guards returned with orders to bring all three before the Baron. They locked shackles around the prisoners’ wrists and led them out into the cold light of a brand new morning.
It wasn’t until they had been chained to the side of a wagon with a dozen other beaten and bruised men that it finally occurred to Florin that the Baron was perhaps not as reasonable as he had hoped.
But by then, of course, it was too late.
The Baron wore the traditional wolfskin mantle around his shoulders. It still stank of smoke, but the Baron didn’t mind that any more than he minded the dents in his armour. Such souvenirs were as good as any medal.
The fighting in the palace had been fierce but brief. Once he had killed half a dozen of his opponents, slaughtering his way through them with a howling glee, the rest had broken, leaving their employer hiding behind his throne, much to the Baron’s hilarity.
Neither the victory or the bloodshed had done anything to diminish the Baron’s renewed vigour. Quite the opposite. Within the first twenty-four hours of his reign he had discovered the extent of the famine facing Vistein, and he attacked that problem with as much verve as he had the palace. First he had sent a messenger to the Elector Count with a letter requesting aid. Then, much to their horror, he had confiscated all of the grain the merchants had been hoarding. He set up a system of rationing which, inadequate as it was, promised to alleviate the worst of the approaching famine.
Sigmar had also sent him the opportunity to get to the root of the problem. When a group of the verminous beastmen had been found tampering with the remaining stores he had sent a party of men after them; men with orders to track them back to their lair.
When neither the troops nor the messenger had returned, the Baron would probably have become concerned, and taken further steps. But by the end of the week he had met Adora.
The rekindled passion which had roused him from his retirement had been bright, but the passions she stoked in his old chest had been devouring. He couldn’t remember a woman like her. There was something about Adora. Something about the way that she reached into his soul and plucked at the strings of his desire as expertly as a musician with a harp.
Within days the flame of the Baron’s love had eclipsed almost every other thought. It had been her idea to clear the gaol with pardons and executions and the Baron, as exhausted as he was entranced, had agreed to this as easily as he had agreed to let her take charge of the rationing.
So it was that as Florin, Lorenzo and a dozen other unfortunates came clinking into the crowded square, he watched them from his throne with a jaundiced eye. The wolfskin cape, which only a week ago, had worn like an Emperor’s cloak, now hung around his body like an invalid’s blanket, and his right hand, which only a week before had wielded his sabre like the judgement of Sigmar himself, was trembling.
Perhaps that was why a gibbet had been set up in the square. The nooses which hung from it swayed in the breeze with an easy, murderous promise which the Baron could unleash with nothing but the lift of his finger.
‘Thank the Lady you’re here,’ Florin shouted to the Baron as he and his fellow prisoners were lined up in front of Vistein’s new lord. ‘I wondered how to get word to you. Congratulations on your victory.’
The Baron peered at the Bretonnian, and his moustaches drooped in a troubled frown.
‘You were wise not to listen to our advice,’ Florin declared. ‘Although, of course, we only had your welfare at heart.’
‘Which is why we warned you,’ Lorenzo added, although without Florin’s cheerful confidence. He had already seen the cause of their problem.
Adora wore a sable coat, one of many gifts that she had received since taking control of Vistein’s dwindling grain stores. The black fur set off the sunlit glow of her hair so that it shone like gold on onyx, the dull lustre only matched by the deep blue of her kohl-framed eyes.
She sat beside the Baron, and as the Bretonnians had been spea
king she leant over and whispered into his ear. He frowned and then nodded.
‘These men,’ he pointed towards Florin and Lorenzo, ‘are oath breakers. They have dishonoured the great name of this city, and like all who have done so, they will pay the price.’
‘Oath breakers?’ Florin cried. ‘We saved your life, you old fool!’
‘Oh, well done,’ Lorenzo muttered. ‘That’s the way to persuade him.’
The Baron frowned again, and doubt crossed his features momentarily. Adora leaned forward and whispered again, and the Baron nodded.
‘They’re to be hung,’ he decided with an impatient gesture.
‘Wait,’ Florin cried, but it was too late. Hands gripped them and they were already being dragged away towards the scaffold. The crowd cheered as nooses were looped around their necks, but it was a half-hearted cheer.
Florin looked at the Visteiners who had gathered for the morning’s entertainment. He saw their gaunt faces and hungry pallor. These were not the same people who had cheered him at the fighting pit barely a week before. An air of hopelessness hung over them.
An air of hopelessness hung over the Provost Marshal too. He had been lost in his own private world of misery since his imprisonment and even now, as he was dragged forward to face his nemesis, he seemed hardly to care.
It wasn’t until he saw Adora, as sleek and beautiful as a well-fed cat, that his despair gave way to rage.
‘You Jezebel,’ he roared, lifting his manacled hands to point an accusing finger at her. ‘You betrayer.’
Adora never wavered as she watched him. If there was an expression on her face, it was the expression of a woman regarding a poorly-sculpted statue, or a badly-daubed painting.
The Baron, though, lacked her reserve. Bad enough that this commoner, this merchant, had forced him to return to Vistein, but he’d be damned if he’d stand by while he insulted a lady.
‘Silence,’ he barked. ‘You are here to be judged, you dog. A Provost Marshal of Vistein does not hire assassins. Especially,’ he pointed towards the two Bretonnians who were even now having their nooses tightened, ‘foreign ones. Empire killers not good enough for you, you damned traitor?’
