Broken Honour

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  Chapter Fifteen

  “By Sigmar, we’re invincible!” Dolf said, eyes widening as he saw the host arrayed beneath them.

  “Don’t say that,” Erikson said, and spat for luck.

  Dolf looked at him, then turned back to the army below. It was camped outside Hergig’s walls, and from this distance it was possible to see the order which had been imposed on the seething mass of men. There were perhaps ten thousand men and almost as many animals. Great warhorses grazed next to scrawny sheep and solid little pack mules. Hounds scrounged amongst the heaps of fly-blown waste and chickens squawked and fluttered within cages or clucked through the grass with the children who had been assigned to look after them.

  But it was the soldiers who struck Dolf dumb with amazement. Hundreds of standards fluttered in the breeze. They ranged from the silken glory of the knights’ banners to the homespun canvas sheets of the city guards to the ancient, bloodstained glory of the state regiments. The men beneath them were an equally eclectic mix. The state regiments formed the core of the gridiron, the neat lines of their camps edged with sturdy corrals and covered latrine pits. From this solid centre the rest of the army spread out like frayed edges of torn blanket.

  Ragged groups of peasants, armed with forks and scythes, intermingled with crudely armoured thugs from various aristocrats’ personal guards. Ragged cavalry units of farmers on plough horses jostled for space with broad-shouldered woodsmen and gangs of bargemen armed with viciously sharpened boathooks.

  Fanatics also prowled through the soldiery, their icons and weather-beaten holy books held aloft in deification. Some preached but most, lacking such coherence, merely mumbled or ranted or stared blindly into the distance.

  And behind them all, serene behind the sharpened pickets and hard-faced guards, rested the artillery. Even Erikson couldn’t remember seeing such an array of firepower before. There were cannons, mortars, rocket launchers. Even a monstrous contraption which he took to be one of the fabled helblasters.

  “I suppose we should report to the provost marshal,” Freimann said.

  “You’ve got that right,” Erikson said. “Where Dolf saw a mighty army he saw a queue of people waiting to get paid, sheltered and fed. We’d be honoured if you’d set up camp with us, Freimann. Sigmar knows, we owe you one.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Freimann said, “but me and my lads are going to find somewhere away from the city. This place is a cholera outbreak waiting to happen.”

  Erikson shrugged.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I wouldn’t fancy being out there when the enemy turn up.”

  “We seem to do all right,” Freimann said. “Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find the rest of my patrol and report to the baron. He’ll be wondering where we got off to.”

  “Thanks again,” Erikson said, and the two men clamped their hands around each other’s wrists.

  “Anything for the heroes of the Battle of the Gates,” Freimann told him, winked and set off on his own. His riflemen had been flanking the company for the past couple of miles and, after bidding their own farewells, they set off after their leader.

  “Captain,” Sergeant Alter said as he took Freimann’s place beside Erikson. “What are we going to do about the survivors from Nalderstein?”

  Erikson turned to look at them. They were scrawny and exhausted, hollow-eyed with grief and exhaustion.

  “I’ll ask the provost marshal,” Erikson said. “I’m sure there is somewhere they can go. In the meantime, form the men into a square and let them rest. I’m going to find the provost marshal and see what I can squeeze out of him. Sigmar knows, he won’t be the first man to have hired more soldiers than he can pay. Porter. Porter! Ah, there you are. Come with me, will you? You’re the quartermaster. While I see what I can get from the baron, I want you to take a couple of men and buy a week’s worth of food.”

  He counted out six gold crowns into Porter’s grubby fist.

  “And I do mean a week’s food.”

  “Yes, captain!” Porter snapped off a perfect salute and tried not to rub his hands together.

  “That includes rations for our guests.”

  Porter’s good humour slipped, but not much. A lifetime of fencing stolen goods had given him a gift for bartering, and combining that skill with Brandt’s fists he was going to make a tidy profit. Especially with so much stray horse meat about.

  “Leave it to me,” Porter said. “Leave it to me.”

  “And you say that you are Captain Erikson?” the guard said.

  “Yes,” Erikson said, trying to keep his temper in the press of bodies that jostled behind him. It seemed that everybody in Hochland wanted access to the baron’s palace.

  “And you say,” the guard drawled, dragging his finger down a scroll and frowning at what he saw there, “that you’re from the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig?”

  Erikson, who had spent the last five minutes saying just that to the man, merely glared at him. He responded by tutting regretfully.

  “No, you can’t be,” he finally decided.

  “What do you mean, I can’t be?” Erikson snapped.

  “Erikson and his company are dead. Says so right here.”

  The guard held up the parchment and pointed to where Erikson’s company had been. With a stroke of a quill somebody had done what the enemy had failed to do and wiped them out.

  “We are not dead,” Erikson said, and fought the surreal sensation that dealing with military bureaucracy so often gave him. “I mean, do I look dead?”

  “Precisely,” said the guard. He was tired and he was bored, and he was sick and tired of being pushed around by officers. “You look perfectly alive. And as Erikson is dead, you can’t be him.”

  “Get out of the way,” somebody further back down the line shouted. “We are in a hurry.”

  “Silence!” Erikson roared, venting his frustration on the man. He had lost out to enough bankrupt employers in the past to know that getting payment was the hardest part of being a mercenary leader, and he was damned if he was going to wait his turn for it.

  He took a deep breath, ran fingers through his hair, and turned back to the guard.

  “Perhaps you should stand aside,” the man said helpfully. “The provost marshal is not to be disturbed with any non-military business.”

  Erikson resisted the urge to hit him. Instead he smiled, as wide and white as a wolfhound. The expression didn’t reach the glitter of his green eyes.

  “Fine,” he said. “In that case I demand to see the provost marshal immediately. I bring him much-needed reinforcements.”

  The guard tried to smile back, but beneath Erikson’s horribly cheerful expression his own effort melted.

  “I told you, you’re marked on the list as dead.”

  “The Erikson on the list must be a different one,” Erikson said. “As you can see, I am alive. And I bring reinforcements.”

  The guard opened his mouth then closed it again. For a moment he considered letting this big lug through, but then he changed his mind. If the man didn’t have the courtesy to offer a bribe then he could suffer.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I am not in a position to deal with recruitment. Perhaps if you come… ah.”

  Erikson, still smiling in an expression that was starting to look quite psychotic, had leaned in close enough to slip the edge of his dagger beneath the guard’s breastplate. He angled it down a touch.

  “Are you going to let me in?” he grinned.

  “Through you go, sir,” the guard said with barely a change in his tone of voice.

  “Thank you,” Erikson said and swept past the man into the high-vaulted hall beyond. Once there he grabbed the nearest messenger.

  “I need to see the provost marshal,” he said.

  “I’m busy,” the messenger said.

  “Me too,” said Erikson and pressed a coin into the man’s hand. “Now, lead on.”

  “I doubt if he’ll see you.”

  “Let me worry
about that.”

  The messenger shrugged, pocketed the coin and led Erikson up a flight of steps that led to the levels above. They spent five minutes navigating through a confusion of corridors before emerging into a wide gallery. It was crowded with courtiers and servants, and at the end a dozen men in bright armour stood to attention in front of a door big enough for a city gate.

  “The provost marshal will be in there with the baron,” the messenger said, and gestured towards the door.

  “Lead on,” Erikson told him impatiently. In his imagination he could see the provost marshal handing out the last of his gold to the man in front.

  “Nobody is admitted without permission. Good day.” The messenger bowed and slipped away amongst the throng. Erikson considered chasing after him, then caught sight of a line of servants carrying platters towards the forbidding guards. He slipped his hat off, lowered his head and lifted the platter of cut meat from the hands of the last servant in the line.

  “Hey!” the man said, but Erikson just winked at him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, throwing him a slab of beef. “I won’t tell.”

  The man hesitated as he examined his prize, then was swallowed up in the crowd. Erikson lowered his eyes and tried to keep the swagger out of his step as the great oaken doors swung open and he followed the servants into the great hall beyond.

  The baron didn’t look up as the servants trailed into the room with the afternoon meal. He and his officers were too deep in thought. The servants stacked their plates on side tables then turned and left. Erikson made to follow them, holding back until the last of them had left the room, then slapped his cap back on and sidled to one side so that he could peer over the assembled officers’ shoulders.

  And yes. Yes, there he was. The provost marshal in all of his chit-signing, warrant-issuing, gold-paying glory. But before Erikson could cut the man from the herd, the baron looked up, sighed and said: “Gentlemen, we have a problem. Reports have started coming in that the enemy are not doing what we want them to.”

  “Not all heading off to sort out those damned Stirlanders then?” one of the officers said.

  “What?” the baron looked at him.

  “It was just a joke,” the man said, turning brick-red. “I mean, it was nothing, sire.”

  The baron held him in his gaze for another agonising moment, then released him and continued.

  “We have been successful in bringing them to us. Those scouts who have returned speak of a gathering of the foul creatures, a great herd which we can slaughter in one fell swoop.”

  “Sigmar willing,” one of the men added, and this time the baron joined in the murmur of agreement.

  “Sigmar willing indeed. But first we have to pin the damned things against a city’s walls, and that’s where the problem appears to be. We were sure that they would come to meet us here. That’s why outside these walls we have every man in Hochland able to carry a weapon. The problem is that they are not moving against Hergig. They are going for Barwedel instead.”

  “Barwedel!” one of the officers exclaimed. “That’s as far from the forest as it’s possible to get. Why would they risk crossing so much ground that we can cover with cavalry and cannon?”

  “It would seem,” the baron said, “that they are attacking where we least expect it. It was no coincidence that most of the scouts who returned were those who reported the earlier manoeuvres that would have brought the enemy here.”

  “But sire,” another officer said, “these are beasts. Surprise, misdirection, selectively killing scouts… How could they know of these finer points of war?”

  “I would imagine,” the provost marshal said, speaking for the first time, “that General Count von Brechthold asked himself the same question shortly after losing our first army.”

  The room lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

  “So, gentlemen,” the baron said to rouse them. “Suggestions?”

  “We can meet them from behind cover,” an officer with the black uniform of an artillerist offered. “Give me time for half a dozen volleys and the horse boys can mop up the remains.”

  “If by horse boys you mean the honoured regiments of knights,” a man in full plate armour bristled, “then you have a point. I hardly think we need rely upon your fireworks, though. Nor do we need cover. It’s space we need, and lots of it.”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” a colonel of state troopers interjected. “Both of your efforts will be appreciated, but it is the grind of the foot regiments that will win this battle. Let us meet them anywhere but in the forest. There my men can cut through them like the teeth of a saw through rotten wood.”

  Erikson listened as the argument grew more heated. He had heard it before in countless councils of war. Most professional soldiers, and all aristocrat ones, regarded all other regiments as no more than auxiliaries to their own.

  The knight and the artillerist were squabbling about a battle which had happened fifty years before and three hundred miles away when Erikson realised that the baron was looking at him.

  “You,” he said, and the others fell silent as he spoke. “I don’t remember inviting you to council.”

  “No, sire,” Erikson said, and executed a perfect Tilean salute. When he had risen back to his feet he had found the words he wanted. “I have just arrived back at the city, and, upon hearing that my regiment was counted amongst the lost, I raced here to reassure the provost marshal that we are still part of the muster.”

  “Frightened you’d be taken off the payroll, hey?” the provost marshal asked.

  “My only concern is victory,” Erikson contrived to sound offended, “although we do need to resupply.”

  “What’s your regiment?” the baron asked.

  “The Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig,” Erikson replied with as much pride as if it had been the Empire’s oldest regiment of knights. “And we remain at your service.”

  “Thank Sigmar for that,” the artillerist said. “We’re saved.”

  The baron ignored him.

  “Then as you seem to have invited yourself to council,” the baron said, “perhaps you could tell us what you think should be our strategy?”

  All eyes turned to Erikson. He met them with a level green gaze.

  “I think that it would be a mistake to start racing around the countryside looking for the enemy,” he decided. “Even if your forces didn’t end up becoming separated, I doubt if the enemy would meet you anywhere other than on ground of their own choosing.”

  “We wouldn’t leave it to the enemy to decide where we meet,” a knight said impatiently. “Our horses are as fast as the beasts. We can outmanoeuvre them.”

  “Perhaps you can,” Erikson nodded. “But what about the troopers and the artillery and the baggage train? No, if you go chasing after them they will devour you one piece at a time.”

  “So?” the baron asked.

  “So let them reach this town, this Barwedel. Give them time to surround it. Then you can do to them there what you were planning to do to them here. Hammer them into the anvil of that city’s fortifications and have done with it.”

  “Anybody disagree?” the baron asked, and as soon as they heard his tone those who had been about to do so closed their mouths. All apart from the provost marshal.

  “The problem is that Barwedel may not be so much an anvil as a clay pot. In fact, sire, we have a full two-thirds of their town guard camped outside our own gates.”

  “That’s war,” the baron said. “Gentlemen, prepare your men. We leave on the morning after next. Dismissed. Oh and Steckler, see that Captain Erikson is paid, will you? I seem to remember that he was one of the heroes of the Battle of the Gates.”

  “Yes, sire.” The provost marshal bowed as the baron made his way out of the chamber. When he looked up Erikson was smiling at him.

  “I’ll come with you now, provost marshal,” he said. “Before you forget.”

  “Oh it isn’t the coin I’m thinking of,” Steckler smil
ed. “It’s how you’re going to earn it.”

  Whilst Erikson was counting each coin into his money belt and calculating his profit so far, Porter was busily pursuing his own entrepreneurial efforts.

  “I’m not saying that the pony is going to die of the flux, Walder,” he said reasonably and gestured towards the animal in question. “Nor am I saying it will die of malnutrition despite the intestinal worms it looks like it’s carrying. Or even of old age, although judging by the look of it I’d say it’s on borrowed time.”

  “You’re quite right,” Walder replied. “It is a healthy specimen. I wouldn’t have been doing my job as regimental quartermaster if I bought anything but the finest animals.”

  “And a fine job you did,” Porter allowed, and winced as he bent down to inspect the animal’s hocks. “But how many years since the beast was in its prime?”

  “One or two,” Walder lied easily and patted the pony on the rump. “We feed them the best in the state regiments. Keeps ’em going forever.”

  Porter hissed through his teeth and turned to his companion.

  “What do you think, Brandt?” he asked.

  “You shouldn’t be able to fell a pony with a single punch,” the big man rumbled.

  Before he could stop himself, Walder had taken the bait.

  “You couldn’t fell a pony like that with a single punch. Not with the strength it’s carrying. Although,” he hastily added, “come to think of it…”

  It was too late. Brandt, who knew the value of a sucker punch, had already lined the blow up and before Walder could finish the sentence his fist blurred through the air. He turned his entire body as he struck, putting every fibre of muscle and ounce of weight behind the fist as he drove it into the soft tissue behind the horse’s jaw. There was a snap and the beast collapsed with a grunt and hit the floor like a slab of stone.

  The three men waited for it to get up. When it became clear that it wouldn’t, Porter and Walder both started speaking at the same time.

  “Just as I thought,” Porter said. “It died of old age.”

  “I’m going to try to save you from the hangman’s noose,” Walder said. “Given enough gold I could say that I sold it to you.”