4 the broken lance

by ich du

  'Don't listen to him,' shouted Matthais. 'He is Shaeder's creature! He betrays us as well.'

  'A lie!' yelped Nuemark. 'I only urge caution!'

  'And look what he betrays us to,' said Reiner. He nodded to Franka, who stood in the shadows behind Gutzmann's horse. She stepped back, pulling surreptitiously on a rope that ran up under the general's cloak. Gutzmann's arm raised - somewhat mechanically - but at least it raised, thought Reiner, exhaling with relief. Hanging from the general's hand was the bloody head of the ratman.

  'Look what foul monsters kill our brothers as we speak!'

  The troops stared, repulsed, at the long-nosed, long-toothed head, with its mangy brown fur. Its black eyes glittered evilly in the torchlight, looking strangely more alive than Gutzmann's.

  'The ratmen!' Reiner cried. 'The ratmen are real! They are slaying our comrades!'

  The troops bellowed their fear and rage. Captain Halmer and Matthais mounted their horses and clattered to Gutzmann's side as Reiner turned Gutzmann's horse and Franka lowered his arm.

  'Form up!' Halmer yelled. 'Form up behind your general, lads! We march for the fort, and victory!' He winked down at Reiner as the men cheered and began lining up in their ranks. 'Nice work, pistol. You've a talent for mummery. I'll handle him now.'

  Reiner bowed, hiding a smile. The captain wasn't about to allow Reiner to be Gutzmann's voice for a second longer than necessary. He turned away as Halmer began barking at one of Matthais's lances. 'Skelditz, ride to Aulschweig and remind Baron Caspar of his sworn duty to help the Empire defend this border. Ask him to bring as many men as he can, as swiftly as he can.'

  Wandering through the column in search of the Blackhearts, Reiner saw Nuemark before his tent, sitting slack on his horse. He stared at the ground while, one by one, his captains deserted him to take up command of their companies.

  The Blackhearts were forming up in the last rank of the first company of pike. Reiner joined them.

  'Not riding with the pistols, captain?' asked Hals.

  'No fear,' said Reiner. 'I've no wish to be first in. If I thought we could get away with it, I'd wait here until it was all over. We've done our part.'

  'No thank'ee,' said Pavel, grinning as he touched his missing ear. 'I owe them ratties a few lopped ears. I want at 'em.'

  'Aye,' said Karel. 'Me as well.'

  'And me,' said Gert.

  Jergen nodded.

  'Hoy, captain!' came a voice.

  The company looked around. Dag was stumbling towards them, waving and grinning. He had a black eye and a missing tooth.

  'I did good, hey?' he said, falling in with them.

  Reiner flushed. 'Aye, it worked. Er, sorry you were ill used.'

  Dag shrugged. 'Had worse.' He pointed to his purple eye. 'And I broke three of this one's fingers, so I got mine in.'

  'Well, that's a comfort at least.' Reiner turned away, exchanging uncomfortable glances with the others. The boy seemed to have no inkling that Reiner had hung him out to dry.

  At the head of the column, Matthais raised his bugle and blew 'forward', and the men got under way. Reiner groaned as the foot soldiers fell into a brisk trot behind the cavalry. He couldn't remember the last time he had rested. It felt a decade since they had escaped the cell under the keep, and not a single break from running, fighting and sneaking since. Oh, for the quiet life of a gambler.

  The pikemen on the other hand were well rested and eager for action, inspired by the presence of General Gutzmann at their head. They made the trip back to the fort in half the time the Blackhearts had taken, and Reiner and Gert and some of the others were gasping when Halmer slowed a half a league from the fort.

  Reiner looked ahead. A trio of men, wounded and ragged, had waved down the column and were now jogging beside the captain and talking to him in urgent tones. Halmer nodded and saluted, and the men stepped to the side and watched the column pass.

  Reiner called out to them. 'What news, lads?'

  'Bad, sir,' said one, a lanky fellow with a wounded arm. 'Very bad. The rat-things have all the fort but the keep and the main gatehouse. Even the great south wall is theirs. And there are many dead.'

  Reiner saluted the man. 'Thank'ee for the warning.'

  'Sigmar!' moaned Karel. 'Are we too late then?'

  'They won't have an easy time breaching the keep,' said Reiner. 'There may still be hope.'

  As the black battlements of the great south wall rose in the distance, Halmer stood and turned in his saddle, calling back to his captains. Reiner could only just hear him. 'Pass back General Gutzmann's commands! Cavalry will enter the fort at the charge! Infantry will follow and hold our position! Do not allow the enemy behind you!'

  Halmer's captains repeated the orders to the men behind them and the command echoed down the column.

  Two hundred yards out, Matthais raised his bugle again and began blowing 'rally', a three note tantara, as loud and as often as he could.

  Reiner and the others craned their necks, trying to see around the horses before them. Reiner found his teeth were grinding with tension. If the ratmen had since taken the gatehouse, then this attack was over before it began. They would be locked out of their own fort, a besieging army with no ladders, siege engines or cannon.

  At last Pavel breathed. 'It opens.'

  Reiner leaned to one side and saw it through pumping horse legs - the iron portcullis rising, the massive oak doors behind it swinging in. He sighed with relief.

  Matthais's bugle blew 'charge', and the horsemen before the Blackhearts' adopted company of pikemen began to pull away. Reiner fought down a surge of regret as he watched the lancers and pistoliers move through the familiar rising rhythms of trot, canter, and gallop. What a thrill to be sprinting in, pistols at his shoulders, closing with the enemy. But then he saw a lancer fall, and another, and heard the reports of the ratmen's jezzails firing from the walls. He shivered. Better not to be a gunner's first target.

  Led by Gutzmann, who held aloft the borrowed lance in his dead hand, Halmer, Matthais and the lancers plunged into the black hole of the gate four abreast, howling fierce battle-cries. The knights and pistoliers charged in behind them without pause.

  Pikemen fell, screaming, to Reiner's left and right in a rain of bullets as the company ran after the horsemen. The bullets seemed to explode on impact, ripping through breastplates as if they were muslin. At last they reached the gate and ran out of the deadly hail. The thunder of hundreds of boot heels ricocheted off the walls of the arched tunnel, almost drowning out the roar of battle that came from within. Reiner drew his pistols. Franka, Dag and Gert readied their bows and crossbows. The others drew their swords.

  And then they were in.

  Directly ahead, the lancers and knights hit the back of a solid mass of ratmen with an impact Reiner could feel through his feet. Rat soldiers flew through the air, blood spraying, as the first rank of knights raised them on their lances. More were crushed under the charge. Reiner saw an iron shod hoof pop a ratman's skull like an egg. The ratmen recoiled from the unexpected attack, screeching and terrified.

  In the centre of the line, Gutzmann's horse reared and kicked while the general sat bolt upright, the pennons of his lance waving bravely. And it seemed that nature - or perhaps Sigmar - conspired with Reiner to help him with his grand illusion, for just as the charge hit, the clouds above the fort broke and the light of Mannslieb shot through, haloing Gutzmann in an unearthly blue-white glow. His armour gleamed, the rat head he held shone silver and black.

  Rat gunners, drawing a bead on the beacon of the general's breastplate, raised their jezzails and fired. Bullets punched hole after hole in his armour, but Gutzmann remained ramrod straight, not even flinching. The ratmen before him fell back, awed, at this miracle.

  Inspired by their general's superhuman fortitude, the lancers and knights pressed forward, their ardour for battle redoubled. They left their lances in the backs of the first rank of rats, then drew their swords and hammers and laid about th
em in a fury. The pistoliers swung left and right, emptying their pieces into the ratmen, then wheeling in to meet them sabre to sword. The infantry captains screamed at their troops to block the sides, and the four companies of pike spread out in a long curving line as the force's lone company of handgunners fired into the ratmen's right wing. Reiner and the Blackhearts ran in the last rank of their adopted pikes to close with the rats on the left.

  They had to chase them, however, for already the ratmen were retreating. Panicked by the sudden shock to their rear, and as unnerved by Gutzmann's invulnerability as his troops were inspired by it, they fell back in confusion, leaving a putrid animal musk in their wake.

  'By Sigmar,' said Hals. 'We've done it. They've broken.'

  'To the keep! cried Halmer.

  The knights and lancers surged forward, but were not able to overtake the ratmen's scampering retreat. The rest of the troops followed at a run, and found themselves stumbling over the bodies of fallen men and horses, lying on the blood slicked flagstones. They had been hacked to pieces.

  Karel choked as he tripped over a gilded helm. 'Captain, look! Cavalry Obercaptain Oppenhauer! Was he caught unawares?'

  Reiner looked back. Oppenhauer's round, rosy-cheeked face was gazing at the sky, an expression of horror frozen upon it. It was missing an eye, and his beard was matted with clotting blood. His breastplate was pierced with the heads of three halberds. The jolly old fellow didn't look right without a grin on his face. Reiner swallowed as he ran on. 'They're in full kit. They tried a sortie.'

  'A sortie? But that is madness! A single company?'

  Reiner looked darkly at the keep. 'Maybe they were ordered to.'

  Karel goggled at him. 'But... but why?'

  Reiner shrugged. 'Shaeder continues to remove all who might challenge him.'

  Ahead of them, the sea of ratmen surrounded the keep, and lapped halfway up it like drifts of dirty brown snow. Some mounted ladders, but just as many were climbing the great piles of their dead that hugged the walls. The defenders fired down into them from the battlements, killing many, but never enough. The keep's gate burned with a weird green fire.

  To the right, the stables and some of the other outbuildings were aflame as well, painting the scene a garish orange. From above, cannons roared, and stones and masonry exploded from the walls of the keep. Reiner could see ratkin crews silhouetted on the main battlements as they worked the fort's great guns.

  'Our own cannon, turned against us,' said Gert, bitterly.

  As they ran through their fellows, the fleeing ratkin alerted their besieging brethren to the threat at their back, and they turned, rat commanders laying about them with whips and staves and squealing orders. In seconds, what had been the ratmen's unprotected flank bristled with spears and swords.

  The cavalry slammed into them first, but armed only with swords now, and facing a prepared enemy, the charge was not as successful. Reiner saw men and horses go down, impaled on the ratmen's polearms.

  Next came the pikes and swords. As the Blackhearts raced toward the ratmen with their pike company, Reiner fired into the seething mass with both pistols, then holstered them and drew his sword. Gert shot his crossbow before tossing it aside to pull his axe. There would be no time to reload. Pavel and Hals began pushing up with their spears to the first rank.

  Reiner cursed. 'Stay back, fools! Let the pikes make the charge!'

  They ignored him.

  The company hit the rat-wall as one, pikes punching their first line back into their second, but there were more behind them, and more behind those. The vermin swarmed forward, trying to overwhelm the men's line with sheer numbers.

  'Don't let 'em through!' cried Reiner.

  Reiner and the Blackhearts slashed and thrust from the third rank, stabbing at the vermin who attempted to get behind the front line. It mattered not where they struck, there was a furred body there to receive their blades. The ratmen went down like wheat before the reaper, but there were always more - an endless tide of monsters: yellow teeth snapping, curved swords slashing, gashing arms, biting fingers, clawing eyes. Reiner was almost instantly bleeding from a dozen wounds, and pikemen fell all around him. Hals and Pavel were stabbing and thrusting like machines. Jergen spun his sword around him with deadly grace. Gert cleft rat skulls with his axe. Dag flailed like a drunk with a fire iron. Franka lost her dagger in a ratman's ribs and was punching rats with her off hand as she blocked attacks with her short sword.

  All along the line, the men of the Empire slowly brought the ratmen to a standstill, and then started to press them back. The gate of the keep was coming into reach. But just as Reiner thought they might break through, men and rats began dropping all around him, screaming and writhing, as exploding bullets ripped through them. The jezzail-rats who held the great south wall had found them. Worse, they had turned the fort's artillery away from the keep. A cannon boomed and a horse reared, its head missing. Another collapsed, legs gone. Another cannon fired and ploughed a trench through the front lines, dismembering man and ratman alike.

  'Do they not care about their own troops?' asked Franka, horrified.

  Reiner shrugged. 'Would even a ratman like another ratman?'

  The knights and lancers redoubled their efforts to reach the keep's gate, in a frenzy now to get out of range of the gunners on the great south wall. They hacked a bloody path through the carpet of ratmen as more and more men fell under the deadly barrage. And the ratmen were flowing around the ends of the men's lines now, trying to surround them. To protect their flanks, the pike companies folded back like two wings, at last meeting behind the cavalry to form a rough square, pressed on all sides by ratmen.

  Matthais's bugle blew the rally again and again as Halmer bellowed up at the keep. 'Open up! Open the gates!'

  Reiner wondered if that was even possible, for behind the portcullis, the huge wooden doors were a roaring green inferno. Teams of ratmen stood before them, aiming weapons that Reiner recognized from his adventure in their tunnels. A brass tank carried by one rat, connected by a leather hose to a gun aimed by the other that painted the door with flames that stuck like syrup. The great oak beams were being eaten away, and Reiner realized with horror that the ratmen might be thin enough to fit through the iron bars of the portcullis.

  'Pistoliers! Handgunners!' came Halmer's cry, and the gunners fired into the flame-crews. Four of the rats jerked and twitched as the bullets smashed into them. A flame gunner dropped his gun as he fell, and it sprayed fire all around, catching his tank-carrying comrade on fire. The burning rat danced and screeched, trying desperately to unbuckle the straps of his unwieldy canister.

  The flames spread to his back, and with a blinding explosion, he was no longer there. A boiling ball of flame erupted where he had stood, and knocked the other ratmen in the vicinity flat, catching them on fire.

  The first rank of knights were pushed back into the second by the blast, shrieking in pain, bits of red hot brass sticking out of their breastplates and faces. Their horses screamed as well, similarly wounded.

  The way to the gate was clear, though it was still aflame. Matthais blew the rally blast again, as Halmer's force pushed forward. Halmer and the other cavalry men screamed up at the keep. 'Open the gate! Open the gate!'

  The portcullis didn't move.

  Matthais blew his bugle again, then shook his fist at the keep's walls. 'Let us in, curse you!' he cried. His forehead exploded in gore, and he sagged back in his saddle.

  Halmer cried out. Reiner looked up. The shot had come from the keep. Someone in the murder room above the gate was shooting at the knights. Another shot fired, and another. Two hit Gutzmann, one in the head, one in the chest. The general never wavered. Matthais, however, toppled slowly off his horse and crashed to the ground, face first, his bugle rattling across the flagstones. Reiner swallowed. The poor lad. A shame for one so faithful to be so faithlessly cut down.

  Another shot took Halmer in the shoulder. He gripped his arm and spurred his horse into
the lee of the gate. 'What are playing at, y'madmen?' he cried. 'We come to your aid!'

  Reiner groaned. He had a fair idea of who was firing on them.

  More shots came, but the target was still Gutzmann. The worse problem was that if the portcullis stayed closed Halmer's force would remain completely exposed to the guns on the great south wall, which were picking them off in twos and threes. Halmer rose in his saddle and bellowed at the square of troops. 'Around the keep! Put it between you and the walls!'

  The square began to shift around obediently, pressing against the wall so the pikemen only had three sides to defend. Reiner swallowed as he saw one of the giant rat-monsters wading toward them through the rat army.

  'Hetzau!'

  Reiner turned. Halmer was waving at him.

  Reiner hurried to the captain, hunching low, though what protection that was from bullets from above he didn't know.

  Halmer was in a heated discussion with the other captains as Reiner stepped up to his horse. 'It's the only way!' he barked, then turned to Reiner. 'Hetzau, you broke out of our keep. How would you like to try breaking in?'

  'Er, if it's all the same to you, captain...'

  'It wasn't a request, Sigmar take you! Someone must enter the keep to stop those guns and open the cursed gates, someone who ain't afraid to disobey Shaeder.'

  'Yes, sir,' said Reiner. 'But how am I...?'

  'There's an underground passage from the gatehouse in the great south wall to the keep dungeon.'

  Reiner looked back to the gatehouse in the southern wall - the distance they had just come. There was a roiling mass of ratmen in the way. 'Sir...'

  'Yes, I know,' snapped Halmer. 'We are discussing that. Someone must get you to the gatehouse, then try to retake the south wall's battlements.'

  'Captain,' said a voice behind Reiner. Everyone turned. It was Nuemark. He was almost as pale as his hair. His greatswords were behind him. He swallowed and squared his shoulders. 'Captain. I... I have much to make up for. Let me and my Carroburgers do this thing.'