“A creature is in distress, maybe hurt,” Volker replied, not looking back but forging on instead, “and I intend to rescue it quietly.”
Masbrecht turned to Eber for support, but the big Reiklander merely shrugged and went after Volker.
A few feet from the privy and the blond-bearded Torveld came into view, together with another Middenlander called Wode and Sergeant Sturnbled just behind them.
“What have we here…” said Torveld, slashing open the privy with his dagger. The door flew open almost at once as the burly Middenlander was pitched off his feet by a sudden rush of fur and fangs. The dog was a brutish and well-muscled mastiff. It had black fur and a tan leather eye patch over its right eye with a single stud in lieu of an iris. The beast growled and took a nip at Torveld but did very little damage, before bounding off the Middenlander and growling a warning at the strange-smelling men in its village.
“Little bastard…” snarled Torveld, his pride more wounded than his skin. He bundled to his feet, retrieving the dagger he’d dropped when the mastiff had sprung out at him. “I’ll gut you!”
“Leave the dog alone,” warned Volker calmly. “It’s just scared.” He approached the mastiff, which was now shivering with anger and fear, and when he was only a few feet away, crouched down to his knees.
The crack of a pistol’s flintlock arrested his attention from the dog. Sturnbled had drawn and was levelling the weapon at the mastiff.
“It’s rabid,” declared the Middenlander sergeant, his arm arrow-straight as he aimed down a small, round sighter at the end of his pistol’s barrel. Froth was spilling from the mastiffs jaws, and ran off its chin to pool on the ground.
“The poor beast has dry-mouth, it’s not rabid, you idiot,” replied Volker. Ignoring Sturnbled, he cupped his hands to draw water from the stream and offered it to the mastiff. Wary at first with the rest of the soldiers looking on, the beast padded up to Volker, sniffed at the air around him and then started lapping at the stream water. It was thirsty and went back several more times as Volker fetched more. By the third time, the Reikland hunter was patting the mastiff’s forehead and stroking its muzzle. After he’d smoothed down its flanks and given it a strip of salted pork from his trail rations, Volker stood up.
“See. Not rabid, just hungry and thirsty. As you would be if you’d been locked up in there for days.”
“More like hours,” snarled Torveld, gesturing towards the nearby corpse of a blacksmith. Volker wondered briefly if it had been the man’s dog. “The blood here is still fresh.”
“How fresh?” asked Masbrecht, a note of concern in his voice.
Torveld rounded on him. “Like I said, Reikland sop, a few hours.”
Masbrecht still pressed. “How fresh exactly?”
A foul stink pervaded the air suddenly like corpse gas escaping from the recently dead.
“Draw your swords…” Sturnbled told his men, then looked directly at Wode. “Find Hallar, have him signal the others.”
“What’s happening?” asked Eber, scanning the middle distance.
“We didn’t meet the greenskins on the road…” answered Volker, the mastiff at heel beside him but growling.
“And? So what? I thought that was a good thing.”
“We didn’t meet them on the road because they are still here. Look!”
Now Eber saw them, two orcs attempting to creep up on them, using a narrow tethering pole to hide behind despite their obvious bulk. It was ludicrous, but then they were greenskins. They weren’t alone.
A garbled scream came from up ahead. It was one of the huntsmen.
Varveiter had lost Brand when he’d disappeared into the ruined shack. A few minutes earlier, they’d heard something coming from the ramshackle abode a few feet ahead of them, one of a small clutch of three arranged in a half circle. The laconic Reiklander had glanced at Varveiter, signalling his intent to investigate, before jogging ahead and then into the shack.
Rechts had wanted to go after him, but Varveiter had made him stall.
“Let him check it first,” the old soldier had told him.
Rechts looked nonplussed.
“He’s quieter than you or me,” Varveiter explained. “If there’s danger he’ll find it, and if he can’t kill it he’ll come running.”
They were both standing at the threshold to the shack. The door was off its hinges with more than one axe hole in the wood. Less a door and more a shattered window now.
“Easy…” whispered Varveiter, using his polearm to ease the door remnants open a fraction. Cold, harsh light spilled in from the outside reluctantly as if afraid to enter. Bare wood and bloodstains were revealed. Varveiter looked back at Rechts. The drummer’s eyes were wide and his knuckles white where he gripped his short sword too tightly. His attention back on the door, Varveiter blew out a calming breath and took a step inside.
Slowly scanning the shadows, he found Brand crouched motionless in the corner of the shack’s single room. A small pottery cauldron was upturned in the centre; spilled broth washed the floor like vomit, mingling with the blood. There were two beds, the thin sheets and sacking mattress dark with vital stains. Bodies lay unmoving in both. Varveiter counted five in total but couldn’t tell if they were male or female because of the darkness and the blood. Another body was strewn on the floor, a cleaver blade still wedged in its back. From the build, it looked like a man. A woodcutting axe lay a few inches from his grasping fingers. He too was dead. The woman mewling quietly before Brand was not.
Varveiter went to his fellow Grimblade whilst Rechts watched the door nervously. His hands were shaking a little, and not just from delirium tremens.
“Merciful Sigmar…” Varveiter breathed as he took a knee beside Brand. He grimaced from the pain in his thigh but took care not to let it show.
Brand was holding the woman’s hand. It looked limp and pale like a dying fish. She appeared incoherent, on the verge of death. Doubtless, she’d seen her family butchered by the greenskins and it had deranged her.
“They stood no chance,” uttered Brand without emotion.
“Poor bastards.”
The woman opened her eyes, a jerk of nervous energy impelling her. Whether she’d snapped into lucidity briefly or Varveiter’s words had brought her around, it was impossible to tell. Her mouth started moving, but she could form no words because she had no tongue. Blood trickled down the edges of her mouth and Brand dabbed it carefully with his tunic sleeve. The dying woman’s eyes widened and she appeared desperate to speak. A waft of something unpleasant drifted through the doorway, like spoiled meat and dung.
“Shit…” hissed Varveiter, recognising the signs and getting to his feet. “Out of the house,” he said, then louder. “Get out of the house!”
Placing his hands almost lovingly upon the woman’s cheeks, her slowly nodding as he did it, Brand broke her neck with a savage twist to end her suffering. Varveiter was limping for the door, calling to Rechts. Brand followed them out into the gloomy day and saw the greenskins that he already knew were there.
It all happened terrifyingly fast. One moment they were scouting through the village, picking past corpses and the ruins of burnt buildings, the next the greenskins were upon them. Karlich saw the ambush unfold from the summit of the lookout point. In truth, it was poorly executed. Several orcs sought to hide by lying down under paltry scraps of hay. Others merely stood still, buckets over their heads. The goblins showed more cunning. They at least stayed out of sight, closing off escape routes when bands of scouts spotted the orcs easily. The poor huntsmen were the first to die. Three made it from the area around the inn but didn’t get far.
As they emerged into the street, goblin archers put several arrows in each Reiklander’s back. The charging orcs that followed, trussed in chainmail and wielding cleavers, cut down the injured. Karlich saw one man, the brave youth who’d spoken out against the Middenlanders at the camp, crawling for some cover before a blade struck him in the back and he was still. His murd
erer snarled and roared in exultation of its kill before barrelling on after its rampant kin.
Throughout the entire village, orcs and goblins were emerging from concealed positions, out of hovels, from hay bales, even underneath piles of corpses. The stench of the dead had masked their scent, but now it drenched the air like a contagion. The Empire troops had sprung the ambush early, thanks mainly to the stupidity of the orcs. It gave the soldiers precious minutes to prepare.
Brutish and wild, their porcine faces studded with rings and nuggets of iron, the orcs were a fearsome sight. Karlich had fought the beasts before. Easily the equal of a man, he knew orcs to have tough skin like leather and almost unbreakable skulls. He had even seen one studded with arrows, its left arm severed at the shoulder, still fight on and kill two more men before it was brought down. Orcs lived to fight and as a consequence were very good at it.
Goblins followed in their wake. Smaller and weaker, goblins possessed a low cunning and if anything were more malicious than orcs. It was not unknown for goblins to torture the victims of their raids, exacting the cruelty they suffered at the hands of their orcish brethren upon the poor humans at their mercy. Essentially, they were cowardly creatures, but revelled in hurting anything smaller or weaker than themselves.
“Lenkmann, raise the banner and rally the rest of the men to this point,” said Karlich, heading for the watch-tower.
“Some of the others on the east side of the village may not see it,” offered Keller quickly. “Should I go and warn them, sergeant?”
Karlich paused to think: Brand, Varveiter and Rechts were on the eastern side. “Do it,” he said quickly, “but be careful. The greenskins are everywhere.”
Keller nodded and sped off.
Lenkmann looked to his sergeant as he threw open the door to the watchtower. “And what will you be doing, sir?”
“Signalling reinforcements. If Stahler doesn’t get in here quick, we are all dead men,” Karlich said and raced inside, the door banging shut behind him.
Karlich had his shield strapped on his back and was able to take the watchtower steps two at a time with his sword drawn. He reasoned the villagers had made them close together so children or women could also “garrison” the tower as required. There was no blood on the steps and they were largely intact despite the damage.
The wood creaked ominously with his every footfall though, magnified by the silence inside the tower. By the time Karlich neared the top, the tremors of battle sounded on the breeze: the clash of steel, the shouts of men and the roar of beasts. He knew he had to gather the regiment quickly. His men were spread too thin around Blosstadt. Without regimental coherency, the greenskins would pick them off without a fight, but he needed Stahler and the rest of the army even more.
His mind was racing as he burst through the trapdoor that led to the tower’s parapet, so much so that he didn’t see the goblin lurking in the shadows waiting for him. Hot agony seared Karlich as a ragged blade stabbed into his breastplate, glanced off and scraped rib bone at his side. The wound quickly became wet with blood, but the armour had saved his life. Not expecting its prey to survive, the goblin was on the back foot when Karlich stabbed it in the throat. The greenskin died, gurgling blood. Kicking it from his path, Karlich moved further onto the parapet. He spared a glance for the slain milkmaid hanging over the palisade like a red, rag doll and was tempted to pull her down for the sake of her dignity but knew there wasn’t time. Instead, he went straight for the watchtower’s warning bell. Sheathing his sword, Karlich yanked on the clapper so hard he almost pulled the bell from its yoke. A warning ring pealed over Blosstadt, carrying to every part of the village and beyond.
CHAPTER FIVE
AMBUSHED
Blosstadt village, Averland,
319 miles from Altdorf
The report of Sturnbled’s pistol was smothered by a series of loud clangs as Blosstadt’s watchtower bell pealed its warning. Powder smoke discharged silently into the air like a gust of grey breath. The Middenlander’s shot was true and struck the charging orc in the forehead. Blood, brain and bone fragments blew from the back of the greenskin’s skull in a ruddy plume. The beast staggered a few more steps, slumped down and was still.
Another trampled over it as if it was just another obstacle to be trammelled in the pursuit of violence. A further two orcs followed: one carried a long spear with a barbed tip, the other a rusty sword and a shield. Goblins had joined the greenskin vanguard too, and rushed ahead of the burly orcs. One came at Sturnbled. With no time to reload, the Middenlander twisted his pistol around so he could use its weighted butt like a club. In his other hand, he’d drawn his sword. Parrying the wild slash of the goblin’s blade, Sturnbled brained it with the pistol. A second died to Torveld’s expert sword thrust, before the orcs caught up and the fight was on.
Despite bracing himself, Volker was barrelled off his feet by a charging orc. It was the beast bearing the shield. The orc had used it like a battering ram and now had the Reiklander at its mercy, until the mastiff pounced, wrapping its frothing jaws around the green-skin’s forearm and biting down hard. Shaking its sword arm fervently, the orc took several seconds to shrug the hound off. The mastiff went scrambling off into the dirt but had clung on long enough for Masbrecht and Eber to end the greenskin with their halberds. Undeterred, the mastiff bounced to its paws and launched itself at another goblin. The greenskin squealed in pain and shock as the vicious dog tore its throat out. Volker was back on his feet by then.
“Good dog!” he praised, weighing in against another orc fighting Masbrecht. The sounds of battle had drawn more Reiklanders and Middenlanders from the surrounding streets and they came with weapons bared. It was hectic and blurred, filled with blood, grunting and metal clashing against metal. Sweat stung Eber’s eyes and orc stink rankled in his nose, but he kept on swinging until there was nothing left to kill.
Sturnbled reloaded his pistol, the greenskins kept at bay by Torveld and his other men, and another blast filled the air, this time without the ringing of the warning bell to silence it. Two goblins took flight at the noise and the smell. One was dragged to heel by Volker’s mastiff, the dog’s master finishing what it had begun with the point of his halberd; the other Torveld killed with a flung dagger.
It was over in minutes, but each man was heaving for breath and red-faced with effort. A soldier wearing a Reikland uniform was lying face down on the ground, blood seeping from a wound to his head. Masbrecht knelt by his side and whispered a few words of prayer, but didn’t turn the poor wretch over.
“It’s Gethin,” announced the other Grimblade that had come with him to join the fight. “Fourth ranker.”
Volker knew the speaker to be a man called Lodde, and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Eber looked on grimly at the morbid scene. He hoped he would not die face down in the dirt like that.
The Middenlanders weren’t spared from grief, either. One had been decapitated by an orc’s blade, so Torveld took the deceased’s cloak and shawled it over the body. In lieu of a funeral, it was the best he could do.
“Ulric will keep them to his breast,” said Sturnbled solemnly, casting a glance in Masbrecht’s direction as he performed the benediction. “Aye, and Sigmar too,” the Middenlander concluded.
By the end of it, four orcs and six goblins were dead, compared to the one each of the Reiklanders and Middenlanders. But it wasn’t over, not nearly done. More greenskins were coming, many more. Another horde erupted from the opposite direction in a running battle with some more of Sturnbled’s men.
“Get them to the hill,” the sergeant told Torveld, recognising the sense in Karlich’s plan to rally there. It was painfully clear the Empire men were outnumbered and the only way they’d survive long enough for reinforcements was to stage a dogged defence. For that they needed a strongpoint, and in a village like Blosstadt the lookout hill with its watchtower was as good a place as any.
Torveld started bellowing at the retreating men, seeing Wode among
st them and pointing him to the hill where the Reiklanders were already gathering. He tried not to balk at the sheer number of greenskins in pursuit, nor the horde that had now emerged from the same direction as the initial vanguard they’d just despatched.
Varveiter heard the tolling bell as he came out of the shack. Another three Grimblades had been drawn to the woman’s soft pleas and were outside in the small square of dirt before the hovels. One was already dead, his helmet split in two by an orc’s cleaver. It could have been Mensk. Varveiter had seen death on the battlefield many times, he was no stranger to it, but even so he tried not to look at the slain Reiklander. The other two, Priinst and Otto, were fighting hard against a pair of orcs. Brand went into the fray, just as another orc and a pair of goblins rushed into the lane facing the hovels, bellowing war cries.
Gutting the first orc, but not quick enough to save Priinst, Brand then moved on to the second with Rechts in support. The three halberdiers overwhelmed the beast with sheer weight of numbers. As it died, Otto went to give Brand his thanks but the words died on his lips with a gurgle of blood. His legs twisted beneath him and he crumpled, a black-feathered shaft protruding from his neck. The goblins were carrying short bows.
“Shields!” cried Varveiter, bringing up his own shield to protect him. While the others had been fighting, he’d moved ahead to waylay the second group of greenskins. The arrow hitting his shield made him slow a little, enough for Brand to catch up. Rechts was on his heels. Together, Brand and Varveiter presented a wall of halberd points for the orc to career into, which it did with bloodthirsty abandon.
Though impaled, the beast still swung wildly at them with a rusty axe. It caught Rechts on his shoulder as he tried to stab the greenskin with his short sword. The tunic ripped and blood welled in a narrow gash, making the drummer cry out with pain as the old spear wound from the ungor opened up again.
[Empire Army 04] - Grimblades Page 7
