“You could,” Theodor said. “But you are a young man, untrained and unschooled in war. The beastmen do not fear you as much as they fear your father. They are happy for you to fight because they believe that they can kill you, and your death will bring their victory. In fact, they want you to fight because a Jorg has to die—and they believe it is you. Your death will bring about the return of their land.”
“What can I do?” Sigmund asked.
“You have already done much, Captain Jorg. I have sent out word to allies, but if you cannot hold back the first assaults then they will not come in time! You must hold back the beastmen and you must not die.”
On the west gate of Helmstrumburg Edmunt watched Morrslieb set over the Stir. He felt the weight of Butcher, hanging at his belt, and the familiar feel of the halberd in his hands. The moonlight glittering on the rippling water was a beautiful and chilling sight: and made him think of the battle to come.
“Do you ever worry that this will be your last night?” Elias asked. The red lantern flames made him think of the blood that would soon be spilt.
Edmunt looked at him, surprised. “Not yet,” he smiled.
Elias nodded. He wondered whether that was last time he would ever see Morrslieb set.
As the night deepened around them, Gunter left the guardroom and went from man to man, on sentry on the gates or along the walls, offering brief words of encouragement.
When he came to Gaston the grizzled veteran winked. “If you see anything then shout,” he said.
Gaston nodded and his sergeant passed along the wall.
Gaston took a deep breath and checked the sheath of his sword. It was sticking a little, but if he twisted the handle and pulled it came out clean. He practised drawing his sword a couple of times until he was satisfied, then ran a finger under the chin strap of his iron cap and rested on his halberd shaft.
It was the waiting that he hated most of all.
Squire Becker was supposed to be waiting for orders in the marketplace, as instructed, but as night fell he led his men through the evening streets towards the north gate.
Short, plump and effete, Squire Becker leading a squad of twenty men would have seemed comic at any time other than this. But as they passed townsfolk in the street the people made way for them and thanked them for their courage.
“Sigmar bless you,” one old woman said, and she stepped forward to mumble a prayer to Sigmar. Squire Becker heard the words and snarled as if stung. His face curled in fury and disgust. He drew his sword and cut the woman down, as if she were a common thief and his men did not pause as they trampled over her.
The people in the street stood dumbfounded—disbelieving their own eyes, but after the men had passed the trampled body of the old woman still lay there in a pool of blood.
One man shouted to the men of the free company, but they marched on down the street towards the north gate.
Squire Becker and his men were deaf to the hue and cry behind them. They turned a corner and saw the north gate where spearmen and handgunners were standing. The time was almost here and they had a job to do.
From the woods that covered the lower slopes of Galten Hill moved a silent army: a thousand horned creatures, animal snouts sniffing the air and smelling victory.
Their belts were heavy with human heads or hands, or other gory tokens. With each victim they had daubed their fur with blood. It caked their fur together in a matted mess. Many of them had come fresh from slaughter—and the blood on their snouts and shoulders and weapon edges still dripped fresh scarlet blood.
One creature led them from the woods: an albino monster—patches of white fur showing through the dripping red gore. Behind him came the largest of the beastmen warriors, which dwarfed the smaller beasts like grown men dwarf children. They carried two-headed axes and massive clubs of twisted wood, knotted and hammered with metal spikes. Some of them wore plates of iron between their horns, or the shield of some long-dead knight strapped across their chest, but most of them did not wear armour of any kind: their ferocity and animal cunning were protection enough.
With the army came all kinds of creatures from the deepest forests, abominations that had not been seen in the Stir Valley for a thousand years.
There were bull-headed minotaurs with great axes in their hands. They snorted and pawed the ground, eager to rip open the throats of their enemies and suck their hot blood.
There were creatures that were half-man, half-horse. Their heads were horned like rams, and in their hands they carried simple wooden shields and sharpened poles, the ends hardened in the fires of their caves, where they had stood for long hours, listening to tales of the ancient times when beasts ruled this land.
There were creatures plucked straight from the nightmare of the most insane: many-limbed, twisted and shuffling parodies of life—Chaos spawn. And dashing through the tree trunks, blacker than midnight, ran packs of slavering four-legged creatures, which might once have been wolves or dogs, but had been corrupted by Chaos. Wickedly spiked spines tore through their twisted bodies, driving them mad with torment.
As the warhost gathered, two contingents split off from the main band and began to make their way around the city walls. Nearly two hundred beastmen went, keeping well out of sight of the men on the walls, but as close to the walls as they dared.
While Azgrak would lead an assault of power and savagery, these two bands would rely on stealth and cunning to break into Helmstrumburg. When all was set, Azgrak took a crude horn from his belt and blew a blast so great that it made the walls of Helmstrumburg tremble.
The warhost of Azgrak the White charged.
Osric was sitting in the guardroom at the palisade gate, playing dice with Baltzer and Blik Short, the leader of the Old Unbreakables, when the first horn blast sounded.
“What in the name of all the gods was that?” Osric said, but he was half way to the door when the call was answered by a thunderstorm of other horns—each brazen voice adding to the cacophony that made the timbers of the gatehouse shake. Osric grabbed his steel cap and halberd and took the stairs to the palisade three at a time. “To arms!” he shouted as his men poured out of the guardhouse and grabbed their weapons. “To arms!”
Baltzer grabbed the money from the table and slipped it into his pouch with the dice before he ran out with his weapon in hand.
The bells of the Chapel of Sigmar began to ring the alarm, wild and frantic bell-tolls summoning all the able bodied to battle.
Blik Short marched out and his company of retired soldiers stood smartly to attention: only their guts and grizzled hair betraying their age. “Onto the walls, men!” Blik said. “Fight well!”
The retired soldiers hurried up the walls and soon the palisade wall was lined with halberdiers and men of the free companies.
Osric stared out into the night, but could see nothing, despite the sound that was like the thunder of a hundred galloping horses. Then he saw—first one horned head, sprinting towards the ditch—and then a hundred.
“Sigmar’s balls!” Osric cursed. It seemed that the land was thick with a thousand sprinting goat-men: their crude banners flapping and moonlight glinting like frost on the tips of their spears. It looked like a wave of hatred that would sweep Helmstrumburg away.
Holmgar leaned on the battlement of the north gate and stared out into the darkening sky. He and Vostig sat together, their handguns ready and charged—even though neither man expected battle tonight.
“Have you ever been to Nuln?” Holmgar asked after a long pause.
“I have,” Vostig said. “It’s a fine city.”
Vostig stood and went over to the swivel gun and started to polish the brass back to a shine.
“It was a shame to let such a piece go to waste,” he said.
Holmgar nodded. Occasionally he’d seen other weapons like repeating handguns or pistols which could fire eight shots before needing to be reloaded, but rather than being different breeds of firearm, they seemed to him to be differe
nt animals entirely.
As Vostig polished the swivel gun lovingly, Holmgar shook his head in wonder. As he stood upright, he saw Squire Becker come round the corner of the street that led lo the gate. He didn’t have much faith in their fighting ability, but the more men Sigmund sent to help them, the better.
“Who’d have thought that Squire Becker would stay and light, when he could have bought himself a passage out of here?” Holmgar mused and Vostig nodded, then frowned. Squire Becker had a drawn sword in his hand.
And if Vostig was not mistaken, the sword was dripping blood.
lust as Vostig opened his mouth to shout a warning there was a horn blast like a clap of thunder and Holmgar dropped his sword in shock. At the same time Squire Becker broke into a run and behind him his men lowered their spears and charged.
Roderick waited in the bar until Sigmund came out, pushing one of the merchants with him.
His legs were mud-stained, but he smoothed down the front of his blue jacket and assumed his usual air of pomposity. His stomach was hollow, his palms sweated. The last person he wanted to talk to was the arrogant captain.
“I demand to speak to you,” Roderick declared.
“All right, but make it quick!” Sigmund said, and signalled to Theodor to step aside for the moment.
Roderick pursed his lips and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “This evening I went to see the burgomeister, only to see him leaving town on his barge!”
Sigmund shook his head. He had expected no more.
“And he was helped,” Roderick leaned in close to whisper, “he was being helped by the friend of that man there!”
Sigmund clapped Roderick on the shoulders.
“I have disliked you, for so long, Roderick, but now it seems you are an honest man after all. I already knew the burgomeister was a traitor. The most important thing we can do now is defend the town, soldiers and town watch alike. Will you join us? Will you give your life to save Helmstrumburg?”
After a second’s pause, Roderick replied, “Yes.”
“Find yourself a sword and that band of cut-throats you call the watch, and join us on the palisade!” Sigmund said.
As Sigmund clapped Roderick on the back, there was the distant sound of a horn call. The attack had begun! “The palisade!” Sigmund shouted and he shoved Theodor in front of him. “Edmunt—run to the west gate—I will be with Osric!”
The town square looked more like an army camp than a market place. There were camp fires lit all across the square, and around them huddles of men gathered for warmth. They heard the horn and knew what it meant—Helmstrumburg’s doom had come upon it.
Sigmund strode down the steps of the Crooked Dwarf.
“Guthrie?”
There was a holler from the camp fire to the left. “Stay here till I call for you! Squire Becker! Where is Squire Becker?”
“He’s gone to the north gate!” one man from the Crooked Dwarf Volunteers shouted.
Sigmund cursed. Damned pompous oaf! He had told him to wait for orders.
“Frantz!”
A voice answered and the familiar shape of his friend came through the darkness.
“Bring your men! We are going to the palisade!”
* * *
Osric had no idea what he told his men—but as the horde of beastmen closed in, he exhorted them to bravery and courage and swore he would track down and castrate any man who failed to do his duty. Every second word was an expletive, but his men barely heard him—they were staring with horror at the tide of horned shapes running through the gloom.
At the top of the ditch on the right of the gateway Baltzer crowded in behind Osric and adjusted his money pouch to stop it swinging against his hip. Schwartz shut his eyes and squeezed out a prayer to Ulric to lend him strength and fury, while Freidel flashed back to the assault on Blade’s Reach Tower, when the greenskins had charged like this—and he told Sigmar that he would gladly sacrifice another finger as long as he could come out of this alive.
On the parapet above the gateway, Vasir’s trappers laid their quivers at their feet and tested the string on their bows.
The beastmen came on, without order, in bands behind their tribal leaders. Some of them carried ragged standards, thankfully hidden in the gloom.
On the other side of the gate Blik Short drew his sword and called out to his Old Unbreakables, “Hold fast!”
The old men drew their swords and waited.
At fifty yards Vasir and his trappers started to fire arrows low and straight at the enemy. Many of their arrows struck home—but with each beastman that dropped two more surged to take its place.
Within seconds the attackers were at twenty yards. The leading beastmen reached the far lip of the ditch they had so laboriously deepened. The slime they had dug out was slippery and a few beastmen fell—either shot by Vasir and his men’s bows, or tripped up with treacherous footing—but they were trampled underhoof as a solid mass of bodies followed after.
The leading beastmen charged down into the ditch and barely slowed as they charged up the steep bank, a few of them flinging spears at the men on the palisade. There was no plan or strategy to their assault. They did not come with ladders or grappling hooks or battering rams, it was little more than a ferocious stampede. They were wild animals that knew no better strategy than to simply overwhelm the palisade by force of numbers.
As soon as they reached the foot of the palisade the beastmen leaped up, like wild dogs, caught the top of the parapet, and hauled themselves up.
Osric stabbed down and caught one on the up leap. The power of his thrust and the power of the creature’s own momentum drove his halberd blade straight through the crude armour through the creature’s stomach. It hung on the blade, trying to thrust its spear into his face. Osric threw his halberd down and with it tumbled the beast. Then Osric drew his sword and stabbed the next beastman through the windpipe.
Freidel felt the palisade shiver at the impact of the attackers. A thrown spear barely missed him, and he stepped back from the lip of the parapet. Two hands caught the top of the palisade in front of him. Freidel had no idea whether it was one beastman or two, and stabbed each with his blade—noticed with a mixture of horror and curiosity that he had cut off a beastman’s finger and it was lying, claw and all, by his feet. Then a beastman jumped and caught the top of the parapet and Freidel beheaded it with one ferocious cut.
At the north gate Squire Becker and his men—Chaos cultists all—fell upon the astonished Vorrsheimers. They screamed horrific curses and clawed and slashed and gored like rabid beasts. The spearmen barely had a chance to reach for their weapons before three of them were lying dead or dying.
Squire Becker and his men trampled the bodies in their haste to reach the cross-bar. They struggled to lift it from the heavy brass braces as more soldiers streamed from the walls and the guardhouse—but it was too late. The heavy doors opened outwards to the night on the enormous black iron hinges.
“Get those doors shut!” Hanz shouted, and a ferocious struggle ensued. Both sides tried to maintain their hold on (he gates as they tried to kill each other. On the walls above the gate Holmgar lifted his handgun, blew on his fuse and then aimed his handgun at Squire Becker. There was a cloud of smoke as he fired, and when it cleared he saw that he had not hit Squire Becker but the man next to him: the shot had scattered his brains over the inside of the gateway.
The spearmen outnumbered the cultists and cut them down—but even in their death struggles they hung onto the gates and would not let them close.
“Get these doors shut!” Hanz shouted again, but at that moment there was a thunder of hooves outside the walls and a herd of monstrously large beastmen came from the darkness, running towards the open gate.
Holmgar struggled to clear the smouldering embers from his gun. There was a ragged patter of handgun shots, but the war party must have numbered nearly a hundred: even if all the shots hit home they would make little impact. If this war party took the gate
the whole forest would stream into Helmstrumburg.
Holmgar fired his shot and was already looking for a way of escape when a huge boom of thunder shook the walls. The whole gateway was wreathed in smoke. Holmgar had a terrible intuition that some traitors had mined the wall, until he heard Vostig laughing and remembered the swivel-gun.
In front of the gate there was a twitching pile of bodies and body parts. One beastman was struggling to crawl away, but the lower half of its body had been shot clean away, and only a few tangled remains of bone and sinew trailed after it before it expired with a low moan.
After the initial shock Hanz’s men tumbled out of the guardroom and charged. Squire Becker and his cultists were driven back from the gateway by sheer weight of numbers. But they fought ferociously, and even when they had fallen to the ground, they still bit and scratched at the legs of the Vorrsheimers.
Another two spearmen fell before all of Squire Becker’s men were killed. Vostig was busy reloading his swivel-gun with a couple of handfuls of shot. Holmgar peered down at the warband of beastmen that had been standing there. There were rumours of war machines from the master craftsmen of Nuln that could deal death to a hundred men, but Holmgar never thought he would see such a thing. It was truly wondrous!
The beastmen had attacked all three gates at once, but it was on the west side of town, where the palisade enclosed the new town, that they attacked with their main strength.
By the time Sigmund reached the palisade the fight was well underway. Osric’s men had weathered the storm of beasts, but it was obvious to Sigmund that they could not hope to hold the palisade against such numbers.
Already there was a stair of dead beastmen along the palisade that the creatures behind were using to clamber up to the walls. Osric’s men cut and thrust until their arms felt like lead weights.
Blik Short had lost two of his Old Unbreakables, but the old warriors held their stretch of wall with stoic courage: not ceding an inch to the beastmen that threw themselves onto the palisade. As they watched, a massive beastman clambered over the palisade to the far right and used a huge battle axe to cut down two of Osric’s men. Into the gap followed four of the smaller beastmen and soon the wedge began to widen as more and more beastmen scrambled for the opening, intent on seizing the palisade by sheer weight of numbers.
Forged in Battle Page 17
