Freimann bowed, turned and left the room.
Behind him Viksberg slumped behind his desk. He had absolutely no intention of sending anybody to rescue Erikson’s militia. On the other hand, what if Freimann checked? There was something disturbingly insistent about him.
His eyes fell on the cylinder of red wax that lay next to his quills and ink. He had no seal. The provost marshal, curse him, had just laughed when he’d requested one. But he did have a ring. In fact, he had several.
He slipped it off his finger and just had time to take a steadying swig of schnapps before the door burst open and a cavalry officer bounded in, all puppy-dog eagerness and idiot courage. How Viksberg despised him.
“You have a mission for me, sir?” the cavalryman asked.
“Take a seat,” Viksberg told him as he started to write. “I am to give you sealed orders which you are not, under any circumstances, to open until you reach the great crossroads to the west.”
“Understood,” the soldier said and watched as Viksberg, turning to the map for a final check, wrote the order which would send him and his company in exactly the opposite direction to Nalderstein.
“I don’t like it,” Sergeant Alter said.
He was standing beside Erikson on the platform which leaned behind the stockade. The smoking ruins stretched away like a desert on all sides, only stopping at the dark green wall of the forest beyond.
“What’s not to like?” Porter asked. “I know they can’t carry a rhythm, but they can certainly belt out a tune.”
The men turned back to the forest from which the enemy’s beating drums had been pounding out their discordant rhythms ever since daybreak.
“Is it ‘Little Brown Jug’?” Brandt asked, his brow furrowed in concentration. Laughter broke out around them, and was instantly silenced by his glare.
Alter looked at Porter, his expression unreadable. He had known men like this back in the regiment. Know-it-alls. Loud mouths. Troublemakers. What really annoyed him about the Porters of this world was that, more often than not, they had the makings of the Empire’s best soldiers.
“Have you drawn up a rationing system yet?” Alter asked him. Porter nodded smugly.
“Of course. We have also pooled our resources with the townsfolk’s,” he said, smiling as he thought about the store of grain he had so effortlessly requisitioned. With any luck they would break out in time to carry a good portion of it back to Hergig, where prices must be going through the ceiling by now.
What a life it is to be a quartermaster, Porter thought, and burst into song.
Gertrude’s a girl who knows more than she ought to
And of more she’ll get the hang
Coz although she’s only the gunner’s daughter
She knows how to make a bang
Those who knew the tune started to clap in time, and soon the town was echoing with the rhythm. For the first time in hours the drums from the forest were silenced beneath the company’s own rough music, and soon another of the men offered a verse.
Molly’s a wench who does as she pleases
And please a lot she will
Just ask the sergeant where he lost his breeches
After he’d had his fill
The men roared their approval. This was an old song, and its words were never the same twice, but it was no less beloved for that. Dolf caught the beat and started drumming out the percussion, and soon the clapping had spread from the company to the civilians who stood with them behind the stockade. As it did so Porter caught sight of Gunter, the only man unmoved by the rhythm.
Young Gisela was raised down in Stirland
And she’s been raising ever since
And makes a change from his tired right hand
Says our own dear warrior priest
Further down the barricade Gunter looked bemusedly at his hand and the men around him cheered raucously. By the time they had quietened down one of Gunter’s own men had composed a verse of his own.
After skinny Lynn tumbled the quartermaster
She counted on growing fat
But it was only gruel that he gave her afterwards
And she had to pay for that
Porter grinned at the compliment, and let another man take the next verse as he thought about the sergeant who stood beside him and how far his sense of humour might stretch.
As the song grew louder and more bawdy, the drums in the forest beyond fell silent. None of the men noticed. The enemy had been forgotten as they sought to rhyme insults with names, or just contented themselves with clapping and cheering.
It wasn’t until the enemy emerged from the woods that the song died.
They swept towards Nalderstein with the unstoppable speed of the cloud shadows which raced them across the expanse of the smouldering fields. Voices which had moments before been raised in laughter now fell silent or barked out orders and warnings. As the men who lined the walls saw the enemy that was upon them, one even began to sob. Alter could be heard snarling at him, but as he did so the pitiful sound was drowned out beneath a roar that emerged from hundreds of bestial throats.
It was a single, wordless cry of rage, and suddenly the approaching beasts looked less like the components of an army and more like the limbs of a single, vast predator. A monstrous beast which had been bred for no other purpose than the destruction of humanity.
As the nightmarish horde drew nearer Erikson told himself for the thousandth time that, after this war, he was retiring. He didn’t feel the grin that spread across his battle-scarred features.
After Kathgor had fallen to the humans’ blades, Hruul had welded the herd together under his own command. The burns he had suffered hadn’t weakened him any more than the slices in his hide. After the summer’s glut of blood he was strong, and his flesh was re-knitting even as he dispatched the single beast foolish enough to challenge his new position.
It was only then, with his position secure, that he had made up for his predecessor’s idiocy. Last year it wouldn’t have occurred to him, but after a summer spent in Gulkroth’s company the way he thought about things had started to change. It wasn’t that he had any less contempt for calculation than before. Far from it. It was just that the urge to destroy had been sharpened like a fang upon a stone.
That was why he had spent the following day urging the herd to chop and clean dozens of trees.
They didn’t like the work. The shaman who lurked amongst them didn’t help, either, the old mutterer. Sorcery or not, Hruul had almost been tempted to tear the senile old creature to pieces, but he had restrained himself. There would be time for that soon enough.
The herd had worked into the night, using their crude axes to chop the tree trunks into the right length and to chip notches in the timber. As day had dawned the drummers speeded their brothers’ work by drumming out a promise of slaughter to come. Only when the last of the makeshift ladders was ready did Hruul lead the herd out of the forest.
And now, finally, after an agony of waiting, the time for slaughter had come.
Hruul felt the ground trembling beneath his hooves as his herd charged forwards, the lengths of timber carried between them. He could see the humans’ heads poking over the sharpened stakes of their stockade. Pale, sneering heads, devoid of horn or hide. How he hated them.
Lips peeling back in a snarl, Hruul quickened his pace, thundering ahead of the rest of the herd. Through the pounding of his own pulse he heard a quickening chorus of zips and whines. Then he felt the bite of a mosquito. He swatted at it absentmindedly before realising that this was no insect but an arrow which had buried itself in his hide. He snarled as he pulled the gory shaft free, and the scent of his own blood washed away the last of his reserve.
With a howl of pure, animal rage he hurled himself at the stockade. The ladders behind him were forgotten as, axe haft held in his jaws, he clawed and clambered his way up the crude carpentry.
More arrows punched through his hide as he dragged himself up towards his pre
y. He ignored them, barely feeling them in the terrible euphoria of the moment. He climbed higher and looked up in time to see the rock that plummeted down from above. With a twist of his neck he caught it on one horn. There was a snap and a dull, bone-deep flare of pain as the rock and the tip of his right horn cracked away and fell below him.
More arrows, and then the first bite of the steel blades which lined the parapet like teeth. This time Hruul snarled with agony as well as rage. As he clawed his way up the final few feet, the steel bit deeply, slicing through muscle and grating against bone.
Then he was over and free, and the blood misted the air as he swung his axe through the cramped ranks of the defenders. He could smell the stink of their terror, and then the rotten, intestinal perfume of their severed bodies as he cut low, dragging his blade through bellies and ribs. Some of the men fought back but, maddened with blood, he was beyond feelings of pain now.
In the midst of this carnage Hruul felt an odd peace. His world had shrunk to a glorious, pink-tinged womb of slaughter, and as the tops of his herd’s makeshift ladders crashed onto the stockade around him he showed no more mercy to them than he did to the enemy. Those who could avoid him did. The rest ducked and dodged, lunging away from their leader through the scattering of men.
It was only when he found himself bereft of victims that Hruul realised that they had taken the stockade. He blinked around him. There was suddenly nobody left but torn bodies and the last scurrying shapes of his followers as they chased their brethren into the slaughter below.
Pausing only to snap off a couple of the arrows which remained buried in his muscle, he leapt down, goat legs bunched beneath him as he plummeted down to land in the midst of panicked townsfolk.
As the slaughter continued he lost himself in the perfect joy of a creature doing what it was built to do. Any attempt to direct the battle was long gone, but that no longer mattered. Over the wall and amongst the panicking humans his warriors no longer needed direction. All they needed was the instinctive savagery and the sweet, sweet taste of man-flesh to drive them on.
“We have to pull back,” Erikson shouted above the din of battle.
“What’s that, captain?” Alter bellowed, turning briefly from his efforts to kick the survivors into some sort of formation. After the onslaught which had pushed them from the stockades, barely two-thirds had managed to form up in the town square. The rest were scattered amongst the chaos of the enemy’s assault, or lying amongst the dead.
“I said,” Erikson repeated, “we have to pull back.”
From the melee in front of him Gunter emerged, leading the bedraggled remnants of his section. In one hand he carried his sword, which was red and dripping, and in the other he was dragging one of his injured men along by the scruff of the neck.
Beneath the spattered gore that freckled Gunter’s face he was grinning. It was a terrible sight.
“Get in formation,” Erikson called to him, waving him forwards. Gunter nodded his assent and loped towards the company. Behind him beasts rampaged amongst the townsfolk, ignoring the warriors as they sought easier meat.
Erikson had formed the men up just within the gate. The enemy had ignored it and concentrated their assault against the southern wall, where he hadn’t been expecting them. They’d also used ladders. He hadn’t expected that, either, but he should have.
I’m getting too old for this, he told himself, then growled as he suppressed the defeatist thought. There would be time for recriminations later. Now all he had to do was save his company.
“How many of the men do we have?” he asked Alter as Gunter’s section bundled past them and into the formation.
“Maybe three-quarters,” Alter said. “Are we going to charge them when they come into the open?”
“There is no open,” Erikson said, watching as a fleeing woman was brought down by two goat-legged horrors less than twenty feet away. She screamed and screamed and then fell mercifully silent.
“Three-quarters will have to do,” he continued, watching as the woman was dismembered. “We are going to make a tactical withdrawal. Dolf, sound the—”
“Wait,” Alter said, horror etching new lines onto the wrinkled leather of his face. “We can’t flee. Who will defend these people?”
“They are past defending,” Erikson said with the cold, emotionless tones of a merchant discussing some minor commercial loss. Alter and Gunter stared at him, shocked.
“It is our duty to defend this town,” Gunter reminded him.
Erikson shook his head. “We have failed to do so. We must go and report our failure and await new orders.”
“No, we must try,” Alter said. “And besides, where is there to flee to? Better to fight here than be torn down in the open.”
“They won’t chase us,” Erikson told him with a grim certainty. “They will stay here for a while yet. Look.”
The men looked. The beasts had fallen upon the stout wooden doors of the stone granary which stood opposite them on the other side of the square. Inside were those too old or too young to fight. The crude rectangles of the enemies’ blades hacked into the ancient wood, and soon the splintered carpentry was disintegrating beneath their enthusiastic attack. From within, the screams of babes could be heard.
“They will…” Erikson began, then coughed as he felt the words choking him. “They will be distracted while we make our…” Again, the words caught in his throat. “They will be distracted while we make our escape.”
“No,” Gunter said.
“We will stay and fight,” Alter agreed.
“You will do as you’re told,” Erikson told them.
As the men watched, one of the women from inside the granary launched herself at the beasts who were burrowing in. She wielded the scythe with a wild desperation that sent them leaping back in momentary surprise. Then they fell upon her, squealing with glee as they tore her to pieces.
“If we’re going to run, then at least we will take their children with us,” Alter said.
“He’s right, captain,” another man said from behind Erikson.
“We can’t leave the babes.”
Erikson turned. He had long since learned to ignore the sufferings of those around him, especially if they were civilians. It was how he had survived for so long and on so many battlefields. A man who didn’t learn how to do that would soon be driven mad by war and its attendant horrors.
But the men behind him, the cut-throats and poachers and lunatics and thieves, they hadn’t learned that lesson. They had never had to. As he looked into their pinched and villainous faces he envied them.
“Very well,” he said, knowing it was madness, but unable to resist. “Gunter, your section holds the right. Alter, yours the left. Porter, your lads make sure the back stays solid.”
Erikson realised that Gunter was grinning as he organised the assault. He realised that he was grinning himself.
By Sigmar, he thought, these men have driven me mad after all.
“We go to the barn, we take whoever we find there and we escort them from the town. Now. Follow me.”
The company’s drum sounded the advance, and the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig advanced towards the mass of twisted horrors that swarmed around the barn. As they did so it occurred to Erikson that, for the first time in his life, he was fighting as a soldier and not a mercenary.
Before he could wonder at that a scream of alarm snapped him back into the present as, from the left, a second wave of the enemy crashed against their formation.
Freimann had been given pride of place in the baron’s council chamber, sandwiched in between the provost marshal and the baron himself. Next to their armour and finely cut cloth the rifleman looked as drab as a hen amongst the peacocks. Even the sunlight that streamed in through the narrow windows failed to find a single brass button or metal buckle on his garb.
The rest of the men who were gathered around the table with them were scarcely any more presentable. Riflemen and rangers stood among
st hunters and trappers, and the assembled woodsmen wore perhaps the drabbest collection of clothes the great hall had ever seen. They wore no decorations, either, instead counting their scars and bandaged wounds as sufficient badges of honour.
Not that it mattered. Now, as they stood leaning over a great vellum map of Hochland, their lack of finery was as irrelevant as their lack of formal rank.
“What about the three stones above the Great Falls?” the baron asked, pointing at three squares that had been pencilled onto the map.
“All gone,” one of the trappers told him. “We lost two of the parties, but they did the job before they were caught.”
“How do you know?” the baron asked, fixing the man with a piercing blue gaze.
“Saw them myself,” he replied. “Went alone to make sure.”
The baron held him in his gaze for a moment longer. Then, satisfied, he gestured to the provost marshal, and watched while he drew a small, neat cross through each of the stones.
“Thank you, Steckler. Now, what about this one, south of Hammerstein?”
Silence greeted the question.
“That was the one we assigned to Hendrick’s group,” the provost marshal said.
“I see,” the baron nodded and stroked his chin. “That’s a shame. What about this one, east of Nalderstein?”
“That was mine,” Freimann said. “It went up along with the engineer who destroyed it.”
“Good,” the baron said, and watched while the provost marshal crossed the stone off the map. “Now, how have we been doing in the south? I know we destroyed that stone near the junction of the Stirland road. That was one of yours too, wasn’t it, Freimann? Freimann?”
But Freimann had already gone, slipping away from the meeting with the same effortless stealth with which he had slipped though the forest.
“Shall I have him called back?” the provost marshal asked.
“Never mind that now, Steckler,” the baron said, turning back to the map. “Now, what about these two? Who did we assign there?”
Broken Honour Page 22
