The engineer’s eyes glittered beneath his glasses and he rubbed his podgy hands together in anticipation.
“I’m not talking about that,” Erikson said. “I’m talking about this.”
He waved at the parchment. Hergig was represented by a stylised sketch, a mass of turrets and crenellations. A dozen inches to the east Nalderstein was a mere dot, and a dozen inches further to the east than that, their target was marked with a small, neatly drawn cross.
“It’s not that far,” Freimann told him. “Fifty or sixty miles at most. I talked to the woodsman who knew where it was myself, and he seemed a pretty reliable chap. We can just follow the river to the ford, then pop straight up.”
“I don’t care about all that,” Erikson said impatiently. “Look at the forest we will have to cross. Not a road, not a track, nothing. Oh, I beg your pardon, not quite nothing. ‘Here be Monsters’ it says.”
“That’s just a mapmaker’s trick,” Freimann told him. “It means they don’t know what’s there.”
“Except in this case,” Erikson countered, “they obviously did. You’ve seen those things. You know what they’re like. Here, we have a chance. We have the stockade, the townsfolk, clear lines of approach. But in the forest…”
He trailed off and chewed his bottom lip as he regarded the map. The blotch of green ink gave no hint of the real nature of the forest it represented.
“Don’t worry about the forest,” Freimann told him, and Erikson’s face hardened as he detected a trace of contempt. “That’s why the baron is sending us long riflers out with the demolition parties. We’re here to guide you. The forest has been my regiment’s battlefield for generations. As you saw.”
“I don’t underestimate you,” Erikson said. “But my men are not trained for this. Besides, who will guard the village while we are away?”
Freimann shrugged indifferently.
“We are soldiers. We follow orders. These are our orders. You don’t strike me as the kind of man to mutiny, Erikson.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Erikson snapped. “Of course we will follow orders. I’ve been a soldier for long enough to know that only a fool expects orders to make sense. These, though. They seem particularly ridiculous. Tell me again, why are we supposed to be destroying this stone?”
“Because we’ve been ordered to,” Freimann told him with impeccable military logic.
“I think what he means,” Horstein said, “is that we are not privy to that information. All we know is that these stones have to be destroyed, and that their destruction is our priority. We also know that they are dangerous although,” he chuckled happily, “they will be a lot more dangerous when they explode into a thousand pieces of shrapnel.”
The engineer laughed uproariously at his own joke. Erikson grinned at Freimann, who rolled his eyes, and for the first time he realised that he liked the man.
“First thing tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” Freimann said.
Flies buzzed around the gnawed wood of the empty stockade. It remained standing where the townsfolk had planted it, the squat iron-and-timber construct hunched in the very shadow of the forest.
There was no sign of the occupant. Traudl had vanished, every last scrap of him, but not even the most optimistic of his former comrades could find reason to be thankful for that. The blood and churned-up dirt around the stockade indicated that, wherever Traudl had gone, he was never coming back.
“Looks like it was done within the last day or so,” Freimann said. He had paused, halting the column while he examined the ground around the empty stocks. He was bent almost double, and he sniffed at the mud and hoof prints as though he were a hunting dog.
“That would make sense,” Erikson told him. “He was one of ours. We had to give him to the Naldersteiners for dishonouring one of their women.”
Freimann examined the captain with a look of cool appraisal as he swung back up into the saddle.
“Well, he won’t be dishonouring anybody anymore. Those are boar tracks. Mostly boar tracks, anyway. Let’s just hope that they got to him first.”
“Mostly boar tracks?” Erikson asked. Freimann nodded and gestured towards the forest.
“Have your men been taught to fight in the forest?” he asked.
“No,” Erikson told him, resisting the urge to boast. “Never.”
“Mind if I speak to them before we go on?”
“Be my guest.”
Freimann turned his horse and stood up in his stirrups. The company had been marching in a column of fours when it had stopped by the stocks, and now virtually every man was gazing at the splintered signs of Traudl’s doom. Those that weren’t were gazing into the dark immensity of the forest beyond. They looked even less happy.
“Gentlemen,” Freimann said. “Soon we will enter the forest. There are no roads here, so we will use whatever animal tracks we may find. That means single file. It may be,” he continued, ignoring the unhappy murmuring that greeted this announcement, “that we find ourselves under attack. If that happens, attack back. Attack back fast, and hard. This is no battlefield we are entering. It is a confusion of timber and thorns, and in there aggression is all that counts. So remember. If we are attacked, you attack back.”
A sullen silence greeted his words. Erikson took over.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “What Freimann here tells us is all good sense. It is also to our advantage. In the open we still struggle to maintain formation, but in the forest, we are at no disadvantage. We meet any enemy that comes at us on equal terms, and on equal terms we will thrash them. That’s why we have been chosen for this mission. Chosen by the baron himself.”
“Would that be the same baron who chose to put us in gaol, captain?” Porter asked, and earned himself a smattering of sarcastic laughter.
“Not at all.” Erikson grinned with all the good humour of a wolf that has had its tail tweaked. “It’s the same baron who set you free.”
“Three cheers for the baron!” Sergeant Alter cried, and so the men cheered. But the only ones who did so with any gusto were those who sounded the most ironic.
“Let’s go,” Erikson told Freimann and so, miserable and strung out, the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig entered the forest’s embrace.
The forest canopy was so thick above them that the track felt more like a tunnel than a path. The air was damp and humid, a claustrophobic stillness that was ripe with the smell of rotten vegetation. Although the forest had at first been deathly silent it now buzzed with biting insects. They followed the column of sweating men, feasting upon the unexpected bounty of so many thin-skinned creatures.
The track twisted around trees that grew broader and more ancient the further into the forest they went. The massive trunks were gnarled by uncounted centuries. They crowded so close together that the only light was a permanent, green-tinged dusk.
Occasionally, very occasionally, one of the trees had fallen to let in a waterfall of sunlight, golden and alive with a myriad of glistening insects and flitting sparrows. But for the most part the crushing weight of the forest remained as unbroken as the surface of the sea, a seemingly endless hell of ankle-breaking roots and grasping thorns.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Freimann asked as he paused on the crest of a slope and waited for the column to close up behind him.
“What is?” Erikson asked, lifting his hat to wipe a smear of sweat from his forehead, then swatting at the fly that had just fastened onto the back of his hand.
“The forest,” Freimann said. “It’s what makes Hochland.”
Erikson was surprised to see that the rifleman wasn’t joking. He didn’t seem to be sweating, either. Despite the fact that the two men had dismounted, the better to lead their horses through the undergrowth, Freimann appeared cool and relaxed. Even the insects which swarmed over Erikson and his comrades seemed to avoid the man.
“I’ve known prettier places,” the captain said, and took a swig from hi
s canteen. Although it was probably only a little after midday the canteen was almost empty. In this close, sweltering heat he was sweating out everything that he drank. From the little he could see of his men, they were suffering even more.
“I’m thinking about the water supply,” he told Freimann. “We need to find a stream or something.”
“Yes, I’ll end the day’s march on one,” Freimann promised. He was sniffing the air, and seemed to be enjoying the foetid fragrance.
“Perhaps we should start looking now,” Erikson insisted.
“No need,” Freimann told him. “This is a boar path we’re on. They’re as thirsty for fresh water as dwarfs are for ale. All we’ve got to do is follow one of these paths to the bottom of a valley and we’ll find one of their watering holes.”
“If you say so,” Erikson said, and with a last wistful look at it, put the cork back into his canteen.
“Don’t worry,” Freimann told him as he idly felt the bark of a tree. “I won’t see you die of thirst. Horseflies, maybe, but not thirst.”
He was smiling at his joke as he took a deep breath and, as the last of the exhausted men staggered to a halt behind him, set off again at the same punishing pace.
* * *
Of all the men in the company, Porter had taken to the military life with the most enthusiasm. For years he and Brandt had kept body and soul together by any means necessary. From extortion to housebreaking to good old-fashioned robbery, the two men had tried the lot. But even during their richest years the two had never been more than a few weeks away from starvation, or a single mistake away from the gibbet.
Now, as company quartermaster, Porter had finally found the niche nature had created him for. He hardly even had to steal.
Over the weeks the company had been together he had been making a constant profit, be it by saving some of the coin Erikson had given him for supplies or by selling the surplus on to hungry civilians. But his real genius, as he saw it, was his ability to keep the men happy with their food. It was amazing what you could do with flour and herbs and animal feed, especially if you could find the occasional bit of meat to add to it.
That was why, when the herd of deer charged the company, he was the first to react.
They had been toiling up a shale slope, clinging to trees for support when, through the curses and falling stones, he heard the distant snap and crash of something big coming through the undergrowth.
A chorus of warnings and orders had come from the men who suddenly found themselves spread out amongst a confusion of trees, thorns and shifting ground, but even as they cried out the first of the animals had burst out of the cover beside Porter.
It was almost as tall as a man. Taller, if you counted the six pointed antlers that jutted up from the thick bone of its forehead. Its dark, liquid eyes rolled with panic, and even though it paused when it found itself confronted by the men, it was only for a second. Then it was bounding through them, ignoring their cries of protest as it raced through their line.
“Shoot it!” Porter called to the men on either side of them, but before any of them could react the animal was crashing into the forest beyond.
“Don’t let it get away,” he called and charged after it. As always Brandt was at his side, the greatsword slung across his back in the crude leather sheath he had stitched for it. The two men barrelled through the undergrowth, following the trail the deer was ploughing through the thorns. If it had followed one of the tracks that crisscrossed the forest it may have survived but, sure-footed though it was, the undergrowth slowed and tangled it, and within a few minutes Porter saw his chance.
“That’s a week’s worth of meat,” he gasped to Brandt as he slipped the cleaver from his belt and hurled it like a throwing axe. The fat steel blade tumbled through the gloom towards the deer. It ended with a shriek of pain and a gout of blood, and to his delight Porter realised that the blade had hit with the sharp edge.
“I’ve got it!” he exulted, and tried to charge forwards, but before he could move he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Wait,” Brandt said.
“Don’t be a fool!” Porter yelled at him, shrill with outrage. “Think about how much we can make from that. We can sell the steaks, pad out the gruel… Oh. Oh damn.”
The two men listened to the screams and yells that were echoing from where they had left their comrades. There was the unmistakable ring of metal against metal, and a deep, bellowing roar that sounded like no deer Porter had ever heard.
“What were the deer running from?” Brandt asked.
“More to the point,” Porter wondered, “should we run too?”
The drumbeat sounded, the beating heart of the company, and Porter thought that he could detect Erikson bellowing orders.
For a moment Porter stood on the precipice of flight.
“We could always slip away,” Brandt suggested, the thought seemingly just occurring to him. From the distant battle there was a crash as though one of the trees had been felled.
“To what?” Porter asked. “We’ll never find a cushier number than this.”
“This is cushy?” Brandt asked, but Porter was already moving, stepping silently through the undergrowth on the balls of his toes, his dagger and short sword already drawn. Brandt, content in the knowledge that the decision had been made by a wiser head than his, followed him.
They were almost back to the track when there was a burst of movement from the undergrowth and three men raced towards them. They were looking behind them as they ran, and only the harsh snap of Porter’s voice prevented them from running into him.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he barked.
“Away,” one of them barked back.
“Hold your ground,” Porter snarled at him. “You heard what the officer said. We stand and fight.”
The man’s look of terror gave way to one of defiance, and he made as if to push past Porter. Before he could do so Brandt drew his greatsword. It hissed from the rough leather with murderous intent, and the men stopped and turned back to where they had come from.
It wasn’t until the thing from which they had been fleeing exploded out of the undergrowth that Porter realised what a mistake he had made.
For the first horrified seconds he took it to be some monstrous horseman and, even in the midst of his horror, some small, forgotten part of him was calculating what the price of horsemeat might be out here. Then he saw the hideous knuckles and grasping talons that clawed at the ground beneath it, and the seamless join of filth-matted fur between what he had taken to be the horse’s body and its rider’s. It reared up, baring a jaw full of fangs in a savage bellow of glee as it lunged towards its prey.
It took its first victim with an axe stroke to the head. The metal crunched through bone and brain. The skull popped open like an overripe fruit, and the beast’s blade was tearing back out through a shrapnelled collarbone even as the corpse fell forwards.
When it turned its weapon was already raised again, but this time the blow missed, merely slicing a line down the back of its fleeing victim. With a snarl of impatience it bounded forwards and grabbed the man with one of the talons on its forelegs. It leant forwards, pinning its victim beneath it like a cat with a mouse, and this time when it struck the blade tore off the man’s head in a single, ragged stroke.
“We should have run,” Brandt said, but Porter, who knew that there was no longer any chance to outrun this horror, was moving to one side.
“Go the other way,” he cried to Brandt and the remaining soldier, but the remaining soldier was beyond taking orders. He merely stood there, his sword dangling loosely at his side as he watched the sinuous grace with which the beast lifted the headless corpse of its victim, tore a mouthful of flesh from the muscle of the shoulder, then flung it away as carelessly as a man who has finished a drumstick.
It wasn’t until the body hit the ground, blood splattering out, that the man pulled himself together enough to turn and run. The beast’s yel
low eyes glittered in the green murk of the forest, and with a predator’s instinct to pursue it bounded after him.
“Get it!” Porter cried as the beast slipped between him and Brandt, and the two of them struck.
Neither man was courageous. Nor did they have anything but contempt for those who were. But if their long career had taught them anything, it was a respect for the vicious gamble. They were unhesitating in their attack, and when they struck it was with a street fighter’s instinctive grasp of his enemy’s vulnerability.
Brandt swung the heavy blade of his two-handed sword with the powerful, hunch-shouldered sweep of a peasant with a scythe. The arc of the blade was in a perfect angle to slice off both of the beast’s hind legs at the joint above the fetlocks.
Porter, his own sword little more than a two-foot-long stub, got closer in. Close enough to take a stab upwards into the dung-matted fur that covered the beast’s belly.
Against a cavalryman the attack would have been crippling. But the abomination before them was something more than that. Even as the two men closed in it twisted with an effortless, drunken grace, then bunched the mighty muscles in its hind legs and leapt upwards. For a moment Porter and Brandt found themselves looking stupidly into each other’s faces as the beast which had been between them jumped high into the air. Then they were moving, their own wiry bodies blurring with the gutter acrobatics which had kept them alive for so many brutal years.
The beast howled with rage, and struck at them both at once. It sent the dull metal slab of its axe down towards Brandt, who was sent spinning away by the impact of the last quarter-inch of the curved blade. Meanwhile it turned with a liquid grace that was more feline than equine, and snatched at Porter with the talon of its back legs.
The man turned, and for a moment thought that he had avoided the attack. But then the talons closed with a rib-snapping suddenness, and he felt the air squeezed from his lungs even as he was pulled back and spun around. He felt his sword whiplashed out of his hand and he cursed himself for a fool as he was smashed into the ground, then crushed beneath the beast’s weight.
Broken Honour Page 17
