“My lord, my place is in the city,” Gerhart protested. “This is where I can do most good.”
“But before, you counselled that we should take the fight to the enemy,” Valmir reminded him.
“That was then, my lord. Things have changed since the path of action for this war was decided upon. I really must object!”
“Brennend!” the elector count growled, his tone darkly threatening. “I would remind you of what I said at our last meeting. You are only here as long as I permit it. You will accompany Captain Reimann and his men on their mission for there are indeed Dark Powers at work and they may well need some form of sorcerous protection on their journey. Do you accept, or shall I have you accused of treason and deal with you accordingly?”
Gerhart knew when he’d been beaten. Anger with the jade wizard seethed beneath his calm exterior. What was Strauch doing? Men of their measure should work together to support one another. Did he not appreciate this? Valmir’s court sorcerer had obviously never met a man like Gottfried Verdammen.
“I accept, my lord.”
“Good. Then I see no reason for any further delay. Captain Reimann, you will prepare to leave at once.”
“Just one question, my lord,” Gerhart said, speaking up again.
“What is it?”
“How will we get out of the city without being seen by the enemy?”
“Don’t worry,” said Konrad Kurtz, Wolfenburg’s own siege specialist. “Leave that up to me.”
“Here it is,” Konrad said, pointing at the culvert and the dressed stone arch, no more than a span high, in the wall of the dungeon chamber.
The thin, low tunnel looked just like a drain. The tiles lining it were wet with algae and there was a steady trickle of water inside it. In the flickering torchlight Gerhart could see nothing but blackness.
“This is it?” the wizard said, aghast.
“This is it,” Konrad confirmed. “Don’t worry. As the tunnel starts to descend, so the roof rises. You’ll be able to make most of your way walking upright.”
“And this will lead us right out of the city?” Karl Reimann asked. His men were ready, waiting behind him in a huddled line.
“The tunnel runs for almost two miles. It emerges through a natural cave at the base of a wooded hill to the south. Our observers on the walls say that the trees there have been left untouched. The nearest Northmen camp appears to be a good half-mile away, between Wolfenburg and the tunnel’s exit. You should be able to evade the Chaos forces without great difficulty.”
“Thank you, my friend,” Karl said, shaking hands firmly with the siege engineer.
“Here, you’ll need this,” Konrad said, handing the soldier a shuttered lantern.
Karl climbed down into the culvert.
“Good luck.”
“By Thyrus Gormann’s beard, something tells me we’re going to need it,” Gerhart said, as he stepped down into the drain and disappeared into the dark.
EIGHT
Shadows of the Forest
“Out in the shaden wodespan, dwelt the murdrus beaste,
Vittalling on the sack-for-homes, gorge-laden with his feaste…
And noth there was that brave the woode,
Noth amidste the sword-handy and the goode.”
—From the nursery tale
of the Empire,
“Tomas Wanderer”
At first it appeared as if the village of Walderand was just like all the others Wilhelm Faustus and his followers had come upon since reaching the lands surrounding Wolfenburg. A settlement such as this one, lying as it did on the edge of the forest, should be alive with the sounds of bustling villagers, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep and goats, the chop of the axe on wood, the sluicing of water drawn from the stream, the rumble of grinding millstones and the ringing of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil at the village forge. But there wasn’t a single sound of civilisation.
All that could be heard was the mournful croaking of black-winged carrion birds roosting in the treetops of the encroaching woodland and the babbling of the village brook, which to Wilhelm sounded more like a sinister whispering. It was as if unseen spirits were watching his warband’s progress and relaying what they saw to whatever was lurking in the depths of the forest.
It was high summer. No breeze blew, the air was still. But still the musky scent of the beast was carried to the warrior priest’s senses. The village nestled amongst low wooded hills within a shallow valley. The straggly edge of the Forest of Shadows stood on the far side of the incline to the east of Walderand, beyond the boundary of outward-pointing sharpened stakes.
Lector Wilhelm Faustus and his growing entourage had reached Wolfenburg, but they were already too late, and soon realised the futility of their enterprise. The awaited fearsome enemy, the hosts of the Northland tribes, had descended on the city and laid siege to it. The numbers of the enemy forces were terrible to behold: bow-trained horsemen, marauding foot soldiers, siege weapons of ancient magnitude, gigantic champions clad in cruelly-barbed plate mail, smoky-breathed warhorses and worse things too.
They had looked down on the grey sprawl of the city, held in check within its ancient solid curtain wall, and seen the Northern tribesmen disfiguring the landscape with their mere presence. Where the barbarians had made camp, the lush green meadows had become marred, black, brown and grey by the corrupting influence that followed in their wake.
Although his entourage had been growing steadily ever since he left Steinbrucke until it numbered somewhere in the region of fifty good souls, Wilhelm did not consider them ready to face the savage, blood-crazed warriors of the North. Wilhelm’s followers were not trained fighters and many were no longer in the prime of life, either due to ill health or old age, and there were only so many visions of hell that the common man could endure before his mind fractured under the sheer horror of it all.
With every village, country estate or hamlet they visited, with every victory Wilhelm claimed in Sigmar’s name, the numbers of his followers grew. The desperate, the distressed, the dispossessed, the penitent and the pious; they were all drawn to his cause, until the wandering band of holy servants of Sigmar had become comparable in size to that of a free company. It was a small army of flagellants, zealots and fanatics.
Wilhelm caught another whiff of the musky animal scent. He thought it likely that the population of Walderand had either fled or been massacred in their homes, just as they had in a dozen or so other places he had encountered already. Clicking his tongue, the warrior priest resumed his ride towards the heart of the village.
It was then that he heard the pitiful, plaintive cries. He only had to ride a little further to discover what had befallen the people of Walderand.
The villagers had been penned inside a stockade corral of sharpened tree-posts four spans high as if they were cattle. The people looked haggard and dishevelled, as if the fight had been beaten out of them. None of them seemed in any fit state to attempt a breakout either—how long had they been kept penned up like this?
There was indeed a very good reason why none of them had attempted to break out.
Standing outside the corral were two ugly, inhuman brutes. Each was at least a head taller than the warrior priest who was considered tall amongst other men. Their bodies were covered with matted fur, and caked in mud and dung. They had broad barrel chests and their strong arms were corded with muscle. They stood on backward-jointed legs that looked like the hindquarters of stags, and their feet were cloven hooves. Their loins were covered by scraps of cloth and torn chainmail and around their necks clattered necklaces of human bones. Each creature held a brutal-looking weapon: one a broad-bladed axe and the other a great gutting pallasz. Rising from their thick bull necks were blunt-snouted goat-like heads, with curling horns above their caprine skulls.
Wilhelm Faustus knew these children of Chaos for what they were. He had dealt with their kind many times in the past. These were beastmen, and he knew how to deal with the
m.
On seeing the ugly, malformed brutes parading before him in bestial arrogance, reason left the lector priest for a moment.
He gave a shout of, “In Sigmar’s name!” and kicked Kreuz into a gallop, charging straight towards the foe. He held his steed’s reins tightly in his right hand, along with his battered shield and swung his warhammer into a more comfortable position in his left. The muscles of his arm bulged, but the priest wasn’t aware of the strain. He kept his body in the peak of fitness in order to serve the Heldenhammer.
Hearing Wilhelm’s shout the two beastmen immediately turned their beady, animal eyes on him. They grunted and huffed at one another, the noises like those of swine or cattle. Hefting their own weapons they stepped forward to face his charge. These were not creatures to shy away from a challenge.
As he drew closer to the beasts, Wilhelm picked out distinctive differences between the two. The one to his left had an eight-pointed star rune described by scars cut into the flesh of his torso. It stood out now, knotted and black. The second, to his right, had four rams’ horns curling from its brutish head rather than two, like its fellow.
The Chaos-rune marked beast ran forward, raising its axe as if to take Wilhelm’s warhorse down with a slashing cut from the knock-edged weapon. Kreuz whinnied wildly and reared up on his hind legs. The priest held on with his hand tight on the reins, gripping his steed’s sides tightly between his thighs. At the same time he brought his hammer round in a circle and smashed the beastman’s axe away.
The animal snarled and stumbled sideways, unbalanced by the priest’s resounding blow. It howled as Kreuz’s sharp-edged, iron-shod hooves came down on its back as it turned, trying to regain its balance. Chaos-scar stumbled further away.
Wilhelm could hear the eager shouts of his entourage as they too charged into the village, following his lead. Leaving the bolder of the beast guards to the zealots, Wilhelm charged his steed towards the second brutish savage.
Four-horns might not have been so bold as Chaos-scar but neither was it so brash. As the priest galloped towards it, the beastman deftly sidestepped, delaying its two-handed thrust with its pallasz until Wilhelm was already half past the creature’s position. Wilhelm had to suddenly defend himself with his shield, bracing himself against the blow. The heavy pallasz rang on the battered metal of the shield but Wilhelm kept his seat in the saddle.
Before four-horns could raise its weapon fully again, Wilhelm swung Kreuz round so that the beastman was now on his left-hand side. He brought the warhammer down with a mighty swing and caught the beast a glancing blow with the edge of the hammer’s head, tearing open the muscle of its calf. Four-horns gave a guttural bark and lurched sideways.
The beastman rammed into the priest’s horse with its shoulder causing Kreuz to take several faltering steps to his right. But the warhorse was strong too. Kreuz retaliated by swinging his chainmail barded head at four-horns. It was obvious that the beastman had not been expecting such a reprisal. It reeled away, bringing it within open range of Wilhelm’s hammer again.
The priest and his warhorse made a formidable team, as many a foe had found out to their cost, just before they died.
The lector struck again. He heard the crack of bones breaking as his hammer struck the beastman’s shoulder. Blood spurted and the beastman howled.
Wilhelm struck again.
This time the brute went down on one knee. The warrior priest’s blow had shattered the bones of its elongated ankle. White splinters could be seen through the ragged red of its ruptured flesh as the broken bone burst through the skin.
The avenging Sigmarite struck once more. The flat head of his warhammer slammed into the upturned snout of the creature, smashing the shattered bones of its skull back into its brain. The beastman collapsed to the ground and lay motionless, face down in an expanding pool of its own dark blood.
Certain that the beast was dead, Wilhelm looked back to where a group of his followers had fallen on Chaos-scar and were hacking the dying creature apart with spear and sword.
Pride swelled in the warrior priest at the sight. Sigmar’s work had certainly been done here today.
In the few minutes that Wilhelm fought the beast guards, the broken villagers had remained silent, too shocked and stunned to do anything else. Now that the battle was over, however, and they saw the small army following in the warrior priest’s wake, the imprisoned villagers broke out into an excited chattering, many offering up prayers of thanks to Sigmar and his wrathful prophet.
Amongst all the clamour Wilhelm caught snatches of other phrases being called out by the villagers: words that sounded suspiciously like “trap” and “ambush”.
“Release them,” Wilhelm instructed, indicating the penned people. “Find them something to eat and drink and have those skilled at healing tend any who are injured.”
With the help of Walderand’s villagers, the priest’s entourage began to dismantle the stockade. Wilhelm dismounted as the first of the prisoners was released. The stick-limbed man stumbled over to him in a state of anxiety.
“Thank Sigmar, you found us in time!” he said, grabbing the warrior priest’s gauntleted hand and shaking it vigorously in a double-handed grip.
“I thank Sigmar for that too,” the priest boomed.
Wilhelm looked over the man’s shoulder to see how the others were faring after their ordeal. Then he sharply turned back to the man still shaking his hand.
“You must get out of here!”
“What do you mean? And what did you mean by ‘in time’?”
“Before the others return. You have walked right into their trap!”
“Sigmar’s bones!” the priest cursed, leaping back into the saddle. How could he have been so foolish? “Arm yourselves!” he bellowed both to his entourage and to the villagers. “This isn’t over yet!”
And then he heard it: a clattering of metal, accompanied by a braying cry and the crash of splintering wood.
The beastman herd emerged from the straggly edge of the forest banging their weapons against crude, skin-drawn shields. Wilhelm and his entourage, hurriedly forming up into ranks, could see the beasts quite clearly, as they pawed the ground at the top of the slope.
Wilhelm reckoned there were almost as many beastmen among the tribe as there were men in his party. Every one of them, even the more human-seeming creatures with only small stumps of horns protruding from their thick, overhanging brows, would be more than a match for one of the Emperor’s trained soldiers. Many of Wilhelm’s holy entourage were not trained soldiers. He would simply have to pray that their holy zeal would take them to victory, for how could the warped and twisted parodies born of Chaos conquer an army of the warrior god Sigmar?
“Prepare for battle!” Wilhelm shouted to the army amassed behind him. “Look to the Heldenhammer for your strength and courage and we cannot fail!”
Wilhelm saw a goat-headed creature in the front line of the enemy horde put a long, curling horn to its malformed lips. The vibrating, mournful note it produced resounded across the field of battle now formed between the two sides. A roar went up from the herd and the beastmen advanced en masse.
Now Wilhelm understood why the villagers had been corralled within Walderand, and the reason for the two lone guards. His progress had been watched. The villagers had been bait, their guards a mere distraction. And Wilhelm had been duped. Animal cunning had won out over human intelligence.
The beastmen surged towards Walderand like a crimson tide; the creatures’ hides a ruddy-brown colour, their horns daubed with blood and red ochre. The one creature that stood apart was a colossal, dark-skinned monstrosity. It was fully three spans tall and its dye-stained horns rose to another span above that. This creature was obviously a champion among its kind, a wargor, marked out for greatness by the Dark Gods in whose unspeakable names it slaughtered and maimed. In its hands it held what looked like the broken axle of a chariot, with a long curving blade attached to the hub of the now broken wheel.
&n
bsp; The champion gave a guttural bellow which could be felt as much as heard over the whooping and braying of the herd. It vibrated in Wilhelm’s belly. The beastmen broke into a canter. The herd’s vanguard reached the staked defences as Wilhelm’s own force moved forwards. Several of the more human-looking creatures hurdled the village’s defences, landing amidst the holy entourage. The battle had begun.
Wilhelm swung his hammer and broke the neck of an ape-snouted creature that lunged at him. As he continued the swing, ready for his next strike, he lashed out at another of the mutants with the edge of his shield. The creature fell back, a deep red gash opened across its ribs. The crude spear it had thrust at the priest fell to the ground, and the ungor fell beneath the trampling hooves of a larger, longer horned gor.
The beastmen fell on the weaker humans in a frenzy of savage bloodlust.
The men of the lector’s troop and some of the villagers too, fought back admirably, but it was clear who had the advantage. The beastmen had been raised to fight from birth. It was central to their existence. If they weren’t fighting the people of the Empire, or raiding from their forest lairs, they were battling other tribes for the best hunting grounds, or even fighting amongst themselves to maintain the hierarchical structure of the tribe. And whilst the humans’ weapons were, on the whole more refined and better engineered than those of the herd, the beasts didn’t need to rely on weapons alone. They used their horns, their claws, their hooves or their teeth.
A wargor sank its filthy fangs into a flail-wielding zealot’s arm. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, only seconds before the monster tore the man’s arm out of its socket in a great gout of blood, and a sharp jerk of its head.
Another beast put its head down and charged a greatsword who had joined Wilhelm’s wandering crusade outside Haargen. The soldier hacked at the gor with his blade but it simply scraped off the hard prongs of the creature’s horns. These same horns then impaled his stomach. The beast shook its strong neck and the greatsword’s midriff was torn open, the purple cords of his entrails spilling free in a torrent of blood.
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