“Unfair?” said Erich, offended. “This is a holy weapon.”
Reiner tied his jerkin as tightly as he could against his wounds. “And I have only this sword.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet, hissing with pain, and glared up at Erich, who looked like a hero in a painting, his head haloed by the sun. “I thought you were a man of honour, Erich. A gentleman. What’s has become of level ground? Of fair play and a choice of weapons?”
“Why should I play fair when you cheated in our last encounter?”
“I did not cheat. Hals acted on his own. I was perfectly willing to fight another touch with you, only fate intervened.”
“A likely story,” sneered Erich.
“Think what you like,” said Reiner, “but here I am, ready to go again, to prove who is the better man, and you attack me with invisible claws and muddle my mind with the power of the banner. Dare you call that fair? Dare you call yourself a gentlemen?”
“You question my honour, sir?”
“I do until you put down that banner and fight me man to man.”
“Don’t listen to him, you fool!” cried Lady Magda, hurrying back from the cliff-edge. “You must not put down the banner.”
“Lady, please,” said Erich. “This is a quarrel between men.” He glared at Reiner. “How do I know you won’t cheat me again?”
Reiner put his hand on his heart. “You have my word as a gentleman and the son of a Knight of the Bower. I will fight you in accordance with the rules of knightly combat. May Sigmar strike me down if I lie.”
Erich hesitated, frowning.
Lady Magda balled her fists. “You clothheaded infant, I order you to hold fast to the banner and kill this man instantly.”
This seemed to decide Erich. He raised the banner high over his head, then jammed it savagely into the ground so that it stood on its own. He turned to Reiner, removing his sword belt and drawing his beautiful long sword. “So,” he said. “To the death this time?”
“Oh yes,” said Reiner, and shot him in the face. The ball smashed through Erich’s nose and exploded out the back of his head with a spray of gore. The knight folded like a house of cards, an expression of surprise frozen on his ruined face. He was dead before he hit the ground.
“You were right after all, Erich,” said Reiner as he threw the pistol aside. “I am a cheat.”
NINETEEN
I Will Not Fail Again
Reiner looked from Erich’s lifeless body to Valnir’s Bane, stuck in the ground beside it. The banner was within his grasp, all he had to do was to throw it into the burning trees below and it would be destroyed, yet he hesitated to touch it. He forced his hand to reach for it.
“No!” Lady Magda shrieked and launched herself at him with a stiletto. He cuffed her to the ground and turned on her, raising his sword. “Fine, I’ll finish you first.”
She rolled out of reach, then laughed and pointed behind him. “You insect. Turn and face your doom!”
Reiner looked over his shoulder. Bursting out of the wall of fire that cut off the base of the hill was Baron Albrecht and ten of his knights, their steeds mad with fear, manes and tails smoking.
Reiner’s men, standing over the bodies of the swordsmen they had only just defeated, turned as well and stared at the squadron of knights advancing up the slope toward them. Hals lay on the ground, clutching a wound in his good leg, no longer good. Reiner noticed with superstitious dread that sparks from the burning trees had set the little shrine of Sigmar on fire and it burned like a torch. Not a good omen.
The knights lowered their lances and charged the companions. They stepped back wearily, too dazed to run. There seemed no way to prevent them from being run down. Unless…
Suddenly inspired, Reiner snatched up the cursed banner and ran forward, his slashed ribs screaming in protest at the awkward weight. The haft bit his hands with crackling black energy. It surged up his arms and made his joints throb in agony.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Albrecht! Knights, I command you! In the name of Valnir, stop and turn back!”
Albrecht and his knights reined up hard, their chargers rearing and plunging, as if suddenly faced with a stone wall. One fell from the saddle.
Albrecht forced his horse down and reached for his sword.
“Fall back!” bellowed Reiner. “Turn about! Down the hill.”
Albrecht froze, his hand halfway to his hilt, fighting the banner’s influence with all his concentration, but his knights obeyed the order without a fight, wheeling their horses and starting down the hill again. At the base, the horses shied from entering the burning woods again, and would not continue. The knights spurred them savagely. The horses wheeled and bucked, throwing off their riders, who, horribly, picked themselves up and walked into the burning trees. Through the flames, Reiner could see their cloaks and tabards catching fire as the flames leapt at them. Reiner winced. It was horrible death.
Albrecht remained where he was, visibly shaking as he tried to ignore Reiner’s order.
“Turn about, baron!” called Reiner. “I am your leader now. I command you to charge down the hill!”
Albrecht began haltingly to turn, cursing and sweating as his hands jerked the horse’s reins to the right against his will.
Reiner laughed. Baron Albrecht was obeying his commands! What a delicious joke. A giddy thrill ran up his spine. With the power of the banner coursing through him, he could make anyone do anything. A vision of ordering his father to kiss his own arse flashed across his mind, but that was mere childish vengeance. With power such as this he could do great things. It was a dark power, true, but if a man was strong enough to control it, it could be made to work for good. He could right grievous wrongs, depose cruel despots, force evil men to lay down their arms. Or better yet, he thought with a chuckle, he could turn them against each other, make evil fight evil for once, and slaughter each other to the last man. Wash the world clean with their blood. He would be king! Emperor! He would remake the world in his…
A searing pain erupted in his back. Something sharp ground between his ribs. He shrieked and dropped the banner. The here-and-now snapped back around him. Magda was drawing back her stiletto to stab him again. He backhanded her across the mouth. She fell on top of the banner.
Hissing in pain, Reiner turned, raising his sword, “You should have cut my throat, sister.”
“Stand, villain!”
Reiner looked over his shoulder. Albrecht had returned to himself, and was dismounting his charger.
“Touch not the lady!” he said, striding forward and drawing his long sword. His blue-hued plate flashed darkly in the sun.
“The lady is a conniving seductress who has turned you against your brother and your homeland,” said Reiner, stepping back. But despite his brave words, he felt like a rabbit in the path of a chariot. Albrecht was stronger, fresher, better armed and armoured—not to mention a head taller. He braced for the baron’s swing.
A shot rang out. Albrecht staggered as one of his shoulder pieces spun off, holed and twisted. Behind the baron Reiner could see Oskar, kneeling near the unconscious Hals, lowering his smoking handgun. Franka and Giano fired as well, but their missiles glanced off Albrecht’s armour. Pavel was shambling forward, dragging his spear. Reiner’s heart swelled. He had forgotten. He was not alone.
Albrecht recovered and closed with Reiner, swinging mightily. Reiner ducked and stepped past the baron to hack at his back. His sword bounced off the shining plate, ineffectual, and he had to twist away as Albrecht lashed out behind him.
“Hold him, captain,” called Pavel. “We’re coming.”
Oskar had dropped his gun and Giano his crossbow and they were limping after Pavel, swords drawn. Franka was circling wide, nocking another arrow.
“Lady Magda,” Albrecht shouted. “Take cover. I will deal with these traitors.”
“No,” said Lady Magda as she pulled herself to her feet. “The banner must fly or the battle is lost.” With an effort she lifted the Bane and stagg
ered with it toward the crest of the hill.
“Someone stop her!” called Reiner, dodging a thrust from Albrecht. “Knock down that banner.”
Pavel and Giano turned, but it was Oskar who ran after the abbess. “I have failed you too often, captain,” he cried. “She will not escape me again!”
“Be careful!” called Reiner, but Albrecht’s sword was in his face and he could spare Oskar no more of his attention. He parried and, with Pavel and Giano, began circling the baron like dogs baiting a bull… They lunged in with their swords and spears as he spun this way and that.
“Dishonourable knaves,” Albrecht gasped, his face red within his helmet. “Three on one? Is this how men of the Empire fight?”
Reiner danced in and cut Albrecht across the calf. “Do men of the Empire enslave their subjects with sorcery and pit them against their brothers? Do men of the Empire slay their own kin to win power?”
“My brother is weak!” said Albrecht. “He does Karl Franz’s bidding like a lap-dog, and refuses to join me in ridding the mountains of Chaos for good and all.”
“And so you bring a new evil to the land to fight the first?”
“You know not of what you speak.”
As he circled, Reiner saw, over Albrecht’s shoulder, Oskar catch up to Lady Magda. The abbess turned at his approach, raising her hand to command him, but Oskar shielded his eyes and slashed at her with his sword. It was a weak strike, hardly more than a scratch across the back of Lady Magda’s hand, but it was enough to cause her to yelp and drop the banner, which fell against Oskar’s chest.
Lady Magda leapt at the artilleryman like a wild cat, stiletto held high. He blocked it with the haft of the banner and bashed her in the face with the pommel of his sword. She dropped like a stone.
“Magda!” cried Albrecht, as the sister sprawled limp on the grass. He started toward her, his own combat suddenly forgotten.
The three companions took advantage and lunged in together, but once again Albrecht’s armour defeated them. Giano’s sword caromed off his helmet. Pavel’s spear pierced his leg guard, but not deep enough to wound him. Reiner’s sword skidded off his chest plate.
With a howl of fury, Albrecht lashed out at them. He kicked Giano to the ground, cut a deep gash in Pavel’s shoulder, then slashed back at Reiner and caught him a glancing blow to the scalp.
Reiner dropped, eyes unfocused with pain, the world spinning around him. He felt the ground hit his back, but wasn’t sure where the rest of his body was. Albrecht was a blurry form above him, raising his sword over his head. Reiner knew this was bad, but couldn’t remember why.
Franka’s voice echoed in his ears. “Reiner! No!”
The shaft of an arrow buried itself deep in Albrecht’s armpit, sticking out of the gap between his breastplate and his rerebrace. Albrecht roared in agony and dropped his sword. It fell point-first, dangerously close to Reiner’s ear. Reiner rolled up, weaving wildly, all balance gone, and stabbed blind at Albrecht with all his might. The tip impaled the baron’s left eye. Reiner felt it smash through the back of the socket and enter his brain.
Albrecht dropped to his knees, wrenching the sword from Reiner’s grip. He swayed but didn’t fall. Reiner grabbed his hilt again, put a foot on the baron’s chest and shoved. Albrecht’s face slid off the blade and he crashed to the side like a wagon full of scrap metal tipping into a ditch.
“Cursed lunatic,” spat Reiner, and sat down hard, clutching his bloody, buzzing head.
“Reiner! Captain!” cried Franka, running to kneel beside him. “Are you hurt?”
Reiner looked up. His vision cleared. The girl’s face was so full of sweet concern that all at once Reiner wanted to crush her to him. “I…”
Their eyes locked. There was an instant of perfect communication between them, where Reiner suddenly knew that Franka wanted to hold him as much as he wanted to hold her. This was followed by a second look, in which, still without speaking, they both agreed that this was neither the time nor the place, and that the charade must continue.
With a forced grin, Reiner broke eye contact and clapped Franka heartily on the shoulder. “Why I’m fine lad, just fine. Nothing a needle and thread won’t fix.”
Franka grinned in return. “I’m happy to hear it.”
It sounded like bad acting in Reiner’s ears, but Pavel and Giano were struggling to their feet on either side of them, so he carried on.
“And I am happy with your shooting,” said Reiner. “You saved my bacon with that shot.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Pavel looked up the hill and groaned. “Lady of Mercy, what’s he done now?”
Reiner turned. At the crest of the hill, Oskar stood hunched, still holding the banner, his face twisted in a grimace of agony.
“Oskar!” called Reiner. “Oskar! Drop it! Put it down!”
Oskar didn’t move. He was frozen to the spot, shaking like a man in a high fever. His face was drenched in sweat, the yellow glow of the burning shrine of Sigmar shining upon it. He spoke through clenched teeth. “I… cannot.”
Reiner and the others started toward him.
“No!” he cried. “Come no closer! It makes me want to do terrible things.”
Reiner took another step. “Come now. You must fight…”
Oskar swiped the banner at him. “Please, captain! Stay back! I cannot control it!”
Reiner cursed. “Oskar, you must put it down. While you hold it aloft it continues to control Albrecht’s troops.”
“I know,” said Oskar miserably.
“I held it,” said Reiner. “I know what it whispers to you. But you must fight it. You must…” Reiner trailed off as he realised that he hadn’t been able to put the banner down of his own volition either. It was Magda’s knife in the back that had saved him.
Tears ran down Oskar’s frozen face. “I cannot fight it, captain. I am weak. You know I am. I…” With an agonised cry he slashed at them again with the banner and staggered forward a few steps, then forced himself to stop. He looked like a man struggling to hold his ground against a giant kite. “No,” he muttered furiously. “I will not fail again. I will not.”
Straining as if he had the weight of a mountain on his shoulders, Oskar straightened and turned away from them. He took a step toward the shrine of Sigmar. Then another. He moved like a man in quicksand.
“Very good, Oskar,” said Reiner. “Throw it in the fire. That’s a good man.”
Oskar closed on the shrine at a snail’s pace, but at last stood mere feet from the fire. He reached out, and Reiner and the others could see his arms shake with the effort of trying to let go of the banner. It remained in his hands.
“Sigmar help me,” he wailed. “But I cannot. I cannot!”
Reiner stepped forward again. “Oskar, be strong!” he called. “Be strong!”
“Yes,” hissed Oskar, through his teeth. He closed his eyes. “Yes. I will be strong.”
And as Reiner and the others stared, aghast, he walked slowly, but deliberately, into the roaring flames of the burning shrine.
Franka screamed. Reiner shouted something, but he wasn’t sure it was words.
“Oh, laddie,” murmured Pavel.
They could see, through the sheets of flame, Oskar standing in the middle of the shrine, shoulders back, burning like a candle, his clothes and hair charring, his skin crackling and bubbling. The flames raced up the pike and the banner caught, first only at the edges, which burned with a weird purple light, then all at once. There was a sound that was more than the roar of flames, a deep rumbling howl of inhuman fury that made Reiner’s hair stand on end, and then, with a deafening crack, the banner exploded.
Reiner and the others were knocked flat by a blast larger than all the battle’s cannon shots put together. A huge ball of purple flame erupted above the shrine as its splintered timbers spun past them like straw in a tempest. The last thing Reiner saw—or at least thought he saw—as he lost consciousness was a daemonic face, screaming with rag
e, boiling out of the fireball. Then it was gone, lost in billows of thick, grey smoke, and the blissful black of concussion.
TWENTY
Your Greatest Service
Reiner opened his eyes. Thick smoke was still rising around him, so he couldn’t have been out long. Groaning like an old man, he sat up and looked around. There was no trace of Oskar or the shrine of Sigmar except a patch of burned earth. Franka was getting to her hands and knees beside him. Giano was hissing as he pulled a dagger-long splinter of wood out of the meat of his arm. Pavel sat with his head between his knees, holding his face.
There was an irregular thumping behind them. They turned. Hals was crutching their way, the sleeve of his shirt tied around his head. “So, we’re alive then,” he said. “Who’da thought, hey?”
“All but Oskar,” said Franka.
“Aye,” said Hals. “I saw the end of that. Braver than we gave him credit for, I reckon.”
The boom of a cannon made them look up. Manfred’s gun crews were at their pieces again, firing down at the battlefield below. Reiner and the others levered themselves to their feet and limped to the cliff edge, and discovered to their great relief that the crews were firing at the Chaos troops again.
“That’s the stuff, lads!” cried Hals, waving his crutch. “Give ’em some pepper!”
The same thing was happening all over the field. Though the battle was such a jumble that it was difficult to see what was happening, at last it became apparent that, Albrecht’s troops, finally free of the banner’s evil influence, were coming to their senses and joining their brothers in Manfred’s army in attacking the Kurgan and driving them back toward the castle. Where before there had been tangled knots of frightened men fighting any who approached them, now the clarion calls of horn and drum were rallying the men of both armies into cohesive units which attacked their common foe with renewed fury. The pall of gloom was lifting from the field with the clearing smoke. The sun shone brightly on the burnished helms and breastplates of the Imperial knights and the ranked spear points of the state troops. The Kurgan, who seconds ago had had the upper hand, now found themselves outnumbered, and fell back in confusion. All over the field, companies of marauders were breaking and fleeing before the newly ordered ranks of the Imperials.
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