“Hold your ground,” he called out, but his voice was so hoarse from the heat that it barely carried.
When the wind lifted again and the fire started to march away, the line stayed where it was. Sergeant Alter, his own voice hoarsening into silence, berated the men. Still none moved, unless it was to shift burning feet or slosh water over blistering skin.
“Dolf,” Erikson said. “Sound the advance.”
“Yes, captain,” Dolf said, and the rolling thunder of the company’s drum added a beat to the crackle of the racing flames.
Once more the men moved forward, but by now they were as reluctant as cattle being driven to the slaughterhouse. As the drumbeat rolled through the flames and towards the town and forest beyond, Erikson prayed again that the wind wouldn’t change.
Kathgor watched the advancing wall of fire as it stalked through the wheat. Although he could not help but feel a certain joy in the destruction of the crops, it was outweighed by the fang-grinding frustration. He had kept his herd balanced on the edge of a glorious precipice of destruction for so long that they were mad with anticipation. He could almost taste the sweet, sweet flesh of his prey. He wanted it. He needed it.
Then he heard the drumming.
At first he thought that it was no more than the blood which pounded through his arteries, pulsing with the terrible energy of his barely contained rage. But no. No, he had heard that noise before, and it was unmistakable. But how could a human drumbeat be coming from behind the fire?
A fleeting suspicion of sorcery raised the hackles on the back of his neck, but he dismissed the idea. Humans were as weak against the shamans’ blessings as they were against the warriors’ steel. Then understanding dawned. His muzzle drew back to bare fangs, and he turned to bellow a summons to those of his herd who waited nearest to them. Then, without waiting to see how many would follow him, he bounded away, following the tree line.
It didn’t take him long to pass the line of fire which was already nearing the town. Kathgor wondered if it would burn those high timber palisades too, but only in passing. The drumming grew ever louder, and even though the smell of smoke blotted out their smell he knew that prey was nearby.
Turning to make sure that none of his followers broke from the cover of the forest too soon, he pressed on until he was past the line of fire. And yes! Yes, there amongst the blackened husks of burned wheat and the smouldering remains of rats which hadn’t been quick enough, were the men.
Crouching down in order to stay hidden for as long as possible, Kathgor led his herd out of the forest and into the shallow river that lay between him and the rear of the humans’ line.
“Keep it up, Dolf,” Erikson said, although the lad had little need of encouragement. Since taking the drum he had learned to play it so well that it had become almost a part of his body, and he could beat out a rhythm with a tireless consistency that they had all learned to march to.
Even now the company was instinctively holding to a straight line, every man in the single long rank adjusting himself to the whole. Erikson admired their formation and, after casting the thousandth worried glance at the progression of the fire before them, looked back to see there really were no stragglers.
There were.
His face hardened and, despite the sting of heat and smoke in his throat, he roared at them.
“Get back into line,” he bellowed, disappointment lending fuel to his outrage. “That’s right. Double time it, you… you…”
Erikson trailed off and blinked the tears from his eyes. At first he had only seen a couple of figures but, as soon as he had called, a dozen more had stood up and started running towards him. Then another dozen. Then, with a horrified realisation that hit him like a punch in the stomach, he realised what they were.
“Oh Sigmar,” he said, and in that moment he almost froze.
Almost, but not quite. Men who froze didn’t survive for as long as Erikson had on the battlefields of the Old World. Although he had never expected to be in such a predicament, and although they were trapped as neatly as skillets in an oven, it took him a heartbeat to formulate the best plan that he could. Then he was bellowing orders at his men.
“Form ranks,” he cried, his vocal cords feeling as though they were on fire. “Form ranks. Dolf, drum the command.”
Dolf was already doing so. As the other men turned and yelled in confusion the lad had taken his place by his captain’s side and started beating the order. Slowly, painfully slowly, the wide line of men began to draw in and Erikson marched back towards the enemy in order to give them enough room to form up behind him.
Not all of the men obeyed the order. A couple of those at the ends of the line tried to flee, desperately scampering away between the closing jaws of the fire and that of the beasts. The rest straggled into the square as, with a terrifying speed, the enemy closed in on them.
If the beasts had looked terrifying on the green fields before Hergig then here, amongst the smoking ruins of the flame-harrowed fields, they looked daemonic. Bloodshot eyes burned with reflected fire, and the animal roar they made as they charged had an elemental power to it. The flaming heat seemed to grow even more unbearable in reply, so that the men’s armour and sword hilts stung wherever they touched skin.
Erikson heard himself bellowing a challenge as the enemy fell upon them. He could almost feel the ragged formation around him shudder with the impact of the charge, but this time he was sure they would hold. Hemmed in by the fire behind and the enemy in front, they had no choice but fight or die.
Within seconds they were doing both. In between the blurred exhilaration of his own combat Erikson caught snatched glimpses of blades punching through hides, axes smashing through bone, fangs bared and bloodied. He didn’t let the images distract him. He didn’t let anything distract him as his world shrank to the sphere measured by the reach of his sword.
He killed the first of the beasts by throwing himself to one side, bouncing off the body of the man next to him and then slicing down into the arteries inside the hard muscle of its goat legs. The creature squealed as it sprayed blood, and Erikson used its falling body as cover for a backhanded slash towards the throat of the next. This one was quicker. It dropped its head so that the sword bounced off the iron hardness of its horns.
Erikson felt the impact of the jarring sword all the way up to his shoulder, and for one terrified instant he thought that the blade was going to be knocked from his numbed hand. He staggered back, but in the press of bodies there was no retreat, and he raised his sword to parry the axe that chopped down towards him with a terrible whiplash of power.
This time the sword was knocked from his hand and pain burst amongst the bones of his wrist. With a grunt of triumph the beast swung its crude weapon back for another blow, but Erikson was already moving. He hurled himself forwards as, with a practiced manoeuvre, he flipped the dagger in his left hand from the downward defensive position into the upright position of the killing stroke.
His shoulder hit the oak-hard muscle of the beast’s torso, and before it could shift its grip on its own weapon he stabbed the dagger into its belly, sliding the blade between bands of muscle and then pressing down to put all of his weight into the twist.
When he withdrew the dagger it released a spool of blue intestines and a reek of methane. As the creature shrieked and clutched at its stray innards, Erikson rolled around the stinking bulk of its lice-infested body and sought his next target.
Before he could, his next target found him. Its shoulders bulged as it sent the misshapen iron of its axe head in an arc that would have smashed through both of Erikson’s knees had he not leapt up. Fear made him as agile as a cat dropped onto a hot stove, and he avoided the next stroke by spinning around the now kneeling body of his last opponent.
He looked at the warrior beside him, desperate for help until he could find his dropped sword, but the thing that looked back at him did so with yellow, goat-pupilled eyes. It lunged at him, fangs slashing towards his thr
oat, and Erikson stabbed with his dagger, popping into the jelly of one of those hellish eyes. The scrum of bodies pressed closed around him and he let himself be carried back towards the flames. His armour was becoming a stove with the heat, but he was beyond caring. If he was going to be eaten, he decided with a hysterical wit, then he might as well be cooked first.
“Captain!”
At first Erikson ignored the voice. Amongst the screams and cries and the crackle of the fire which waited for them it was just one more distraction to be ignored.
“Captain!”
This time he did hear it. It sounded like Gunter. No, it didn’t sound like him. It was him.
Erikson turned and saw the miracle. Although the fire he had set still burned in a wall behind him, a gap had appeared in the flame and, through this gap, his men were already pouring.
“Captain,” Gunter’s voice called again. “Withdraw!”
Erikson felt the press of bodies behind him slacken as the men disappeared through the flames and there, glinting in the burned grass, was his sword. He stooped to pick it up, ignoring the blistering heat that cooked his palm, and let the company tumble away behind him.
The enemy showed little appetite for following them. The first of them, the strongest and hungriest, were either dying or busily gorging themselves on the flesh of those they had killed. The others shied away from the flames that still spread out on either side of Erikson’s company, fluttering like the wings of a phoenix. Erikson watched them as he backed away, and suddenly they were gone, vanished beneath a sudden wall of flame.
“This way,” Gunter said, and Erikson felt a strong hand grip his shoulder. It dragged him through the heat, between the two gateposts of fire, and through into the blinding smoke beyond.
“Now run,” Gunter bellowed. “Run!”
Overwhelmed by confusion and doubled up by a fit of coughing, Erikson allowed himself to be dragged along. Seconds seemed to last for hours as they slipped through the inferno, but finally they were clear. Through streaming eyes he saw that the fire was behind them. Ahead, a wide swathe had been cut through the wheat towards Nalderstein’s gates. His men staggered along the fire break. Most of them were as singed and disorientated as he was himself, and they were being herded towards safety by men who looked nervously towards the forest.
“Gunter,” Erikson wheezed as the two of them trotted along behind the rest of the survivors. “Well done.”
“Sigmar provides,” Gunter told him as he bundled him towards the gates. “And anyway, you did come to save us.”
Erikson looked at the burned and choking gaggle of survivors who stood around him and started to laugh. Then he began to choke, and even as he doubled over to hawk out great gobs of soot and phlegm he wondered if Nalderstein’s walls would be proof against the flame.
Chapter Thirteen
Gulkroth brooded amongst the blasted remains. By now he was getting used to the stink of shattered stone and burned blackpowder that hung around the desecrations of the herdstones. He had visited several himself and every day messengers came to him with fresh reports of new blasphemies.
No matter how many of these sites he visited he would never get used to the hungry, gnawing emptiness a destroyed herdstone left behind it. He could still feel the energy which pulsed and writhed through the ground, but the centuries of power which the stones had bound left a terrible void in the world as they dissipated.
It was the same here as it had been everywhere else. The herd which had worshipped the stone stood amongst the steaming soil and splintered timber of their defiled grotto. Although they had fed well this summer they had a shrunken, defeated look.
Their shaman, a wall-eyed ancient who had served Gulkroth well over the summer, was crawling around on all fours amongst the ruin. He mewled like an infant as he gathered up the shards of stone that lay about the earth. Some of them still glowed with power, but they were no more than embers from a once-mighty pyre of energy.
“Do we have the scent of those that did this thing?” Gulkroth asked the shaman.
“They are dead,” the ancient hissed. “We caught them as they tried to flee.”
Gulkroth felt the rage building up inside him, ripening like some terrible fruit beneath a burning sun.
“We will reap such a revenge for this,” he said, stalking up to the herd so that he towered above them. “We will tear the humans asunder and gorge on their blood until we are as fat as ticks.”
There was no response. Tails remained curled up between legs. Eyes remained downcast. Some crouched on the floor, arms wrapped around their legs as they rocked back and forth.
“Shaman,” Gulkroth said, turning back to the ancient as he scrabbled about the ruins. “What can we do to restore your herd’s pride?”
“A new stone can be planted,” he muttered without looking up. “In time it will grow in power. In time.”
“Then a new stone will be planted,” Gulkroth decreed. “Where will we find such a one?”
For the first time the shaman looked at Gulkroth, and the lord was pleased to see ferocity in his eyes.
“We must take it from the humans,” he hissed through bared teeth. “Tear it from one of their cities and baptise it with rivers of their blood.”
Gulkroth rumbled his assent.
“The time is coming,” he promised, raising his voice so that the thunder of it lifted the fur on the back of the beasts’ necks. “Even now the Chaos Moon grows fatter, growing pregnant with power. When it is full we will be gathered, I promise you that, and we will fall upon the humans in a storm of blood and victory.”
“And of vengeance,” the shaman added.
“And vengeance,” Gulkroth roared, and despair turning to rage, the assembled herd roared back at him.
“It’s quite out of the question,” Viksberg said, his voice echoing around the cavernous expanse of his office. It lay in the depths of the baron’s palace, an ancient expanse of vaulted stone, and he never grew tired of listening to the acoustics of the dank place. They made him sound so authoritative.
Freimann, who was slouching in a seat he hadn’t been offered, didn’t seem to notice. He hated being stuck in Hergig, let alone inside the cold, airless depths of the palace. Even more, he hated the officious functionaries that inhabited it.
This Viksberg was a prime example of his breed. Below his watery eyes and weak chin he wore a uniform that could have graced the Emperor himself. Silvered armour gave way to silk brocade and slashed velvet breeches. Despite the fact that it was high summer outside, he also wore a cape lined with ermine, and a hat bristling with feathers lay on the desk in front of him, and sewn and embroidered and encrusted throughout the costume there was an entire menagerie of heraldic animals.
Freimann, who had spent his childhood as a trapper, wondered how much this fop’s vestments would be worth if he were caught in a snare and stripped. Then he realised that the fool was talking.
“…so as you can see from the map, we have no reserves to spare for any but the direst of emergencies.” Viksberg waved at the map which graced the wall behind him. The coloured pins which represented the enemy swarmed across it like hornets.
“The beasts have been grinding us down throughout the barony,” Viksberg continued, enjoying how knowledgeable the parroted analysis made him sound. “We have lost towns, hamlets. An entire regiment was swallowed up on the way to Lerenstein, and we haven’t received a single message from the new settlements within the deeper forest for weeks.”
“Precisely,” Freimann said.
“What? What do you mean?”
“We can’t afford to lose any more men. Erikson’s band are a bit scruffy, but they fight well enough. Got guts, too. You should have seen how they got back into the town.”
“In that case I’m sure they will be able to rescue themselves,” Viksberg said. “Now, if that will be all…”
“Besides,” Freimann ploughed on, “I was talking to the captain of a cavalry squadron while I was waiti
ng. He said he’d be happy to do it.”
“I’m sure he would, but that’s beside the point. These were just militiamen,” Viksberg said and, horrified at the wheedling tone in his voice, he cleared his throat before continuing. “As the provost marshal’s assistant, I can’t justify sending a valuable unit to save a few dozen criminals and an arsonist.”
Freimann smiled.
“So you know them,” he said.
Viksberg swallowed and looked down at the parchments which covered his desk. Every single one of them was a requisition for firewood. For some reason, the provost marshal wouldn’t let him handle anything else. Just firewood. It was only through the most excruciating bribery that he had persuaded the heralds to send any enquiries regarding Erikson’s accursed company his way.
“Because if you do know them,” Freimann continued, the smile never leaving his face, “it would be most unfair of me to ask you to make the decision.”
“No it wouldn’t,” Viksberg said.
“Ah, but it would. Torn between affection and duty, how would you be able to sleep tonight?”
“I will be able to sleep just fine,” Viksberg said.
“No, I won’t burden you with this. I’ll take it up with the provost marshal himself instead.”
“You can’t,” Viksberg squeaked. “He’s busy.”
“Then the baron,” Freimann lied. “I have a briefing to deliver to him anyway.”
“All right,” Viksberg said. “All right, if it will save you from bothering the baron, I will send a small detachment to bring them out.”
“You will send that cavalry captain in at once,” Freimann said. “The sooner he and his men can leave, the better.”
“Fine,” Viksberg slumped back in defeat. “And these men are at Nalderstein you say? Very well. Now, if there is nothing else I can help you with, I must get on.”
Broken Honour Page 21
