Forged in Battle

by Justin Hunter - (ebook by Undead)

  Frantz and his dockers were impatient to join the battle but Sigmund held them back until the beastmen assault along the rest of the wall faltered. All hurried to the opening and then he drew his sword and charged. Osric’s men, who were about to break felt the impact of Sigmund’s charge on the pressed mass of beastmen and struck back with renewed vigour.

  Sigmund slashed left and right. A spear stabbed at him from out of his field of vision and he felt the blow on his cuirboili breastplate and was knocked sideways. The spear-thruster sensed an advantage and readied another stab, but this time Sigmund caught the shaft. At the same time as he pulled he slashed down with his sword and lopped off both of the beastman’s forearms, then ran him through with his own spear.

  Next to him, Frantz desperately parried an axe blow with his buckler, but the power of the blow jarred his hand and arm. He struck back in fury and gutted him with a slow thrust.

  Above the gateway, Vasir strung another arrow and looked for a suitable target. Through the mass of bodies he could see a number of bull-headed creatures—minotaurs—pushing their way through the press. They were over eight feet tall and they carried twin-headed axes in their massive fists.

  Vasir’s first arrow hit one in the chest, but even though the arrow embedded itself into its flesh the creature didn’t seem to notice. He looked in his quiver, he only had three arrows left. The beasts were just below him now, bellowing like enraged bulls and swinging their axes into the timbers of the gate as if they meant to chop a hole through.

  There was no way Vasir could miss. The next arrow hit the same creature in the shoulder and it dropped the axe for a moment. The next hit it in the lower back as it bent over, and the last caught the creature in the knee—but instead of keeling over the beast lowered its thick neck and charged the gate like a maddened bull. Vasir felt the whole gateway quiver under the impact. The bull charged again and this time his platform swayed violently. He clutched the palisade for support but the creature charged again and part of the walkway broke free.

  “Back!” Vasir shouted but the other trappers had already started to jump to safety. Two men tipped over the front of the parapet into the path of the minotaurs. The foul creatures grabbed them by the limbs and literally tore them apart.

  * * *

  At the base of the water tower on the east wall Theodor waited in the shadows as he saw the figure that he knew would come creep across to the disused shed. Theodor silently adjusted the grip on his pistols and moved to lessen the distance between him and his prey.

  He could see a smouldering fuse in his prey’s hand, and heard the rattle of a key as he undid the lock. There was no reason to wait, but Theodor did so for his own satisfaction. The shed door swung open and his prey uncovered the lantern and—gasped in fury.

  The barrels which were to have blown a hole in the wall for the beastmen to charge through had gone!

  Eugen spun around as Theodor stepped from the shadows, twin pistols raised and primed, fuses smoking dangerously.

  “You have failed, Eugen,” Theodor said in his Talabheim accent. There was special emphasis on the word “failed”. Confronting his former master was more than satisfying, it helped expunge the memory of what he had pretended to be for so long.

  Eugen hissed and drew his sword, but there was no chance to fight. He fired the right-hand pistol then paused to let the smoke clear and shot the left. The first was a death shot low in the groin, the other high on the left arm: shattering the bone as the heavy shot pulverised the arm and left it hanging useless.

  Eugen staggered and fell—blood pumping from his pulverised arm and groin, his breath already beginning to rattle with the onset of death.

  Theodor stared down at him for a moment, then spat in the face he hated above all, slowly reholstered his pistols and then turned back the way he had come, where the din of fighting was growing in volume.

  There was no attack on the east gate, so Gunter sent Elias to find out how the men on the west of town were faring.

  The streets of Helmstrumburg were empty as Elias ran. He found Sigmund standing behind the palisade gate with a bloody bandage around his head and a sword still in his hand.

  Sigmund’s face was flushed, but there was no evidence of panic as he watched the fighting and issued orders. He saw Elias and recognised that he had come from the east gate and he turned and hailed him. “What news?”

  “Sir—there was no fighting on the east when I left it.”

  Sigmund nodded. The situation was confused, but it seemed that the beastmen had thrown their whole weight against the west gate and palisade, and although they had driven the beastmen back over the wall, Osric’s men were outnumbered and exhausted. The palisade would not hold.

  As they stood the gate began to quiver with impacts, and the trappers scrambled for safety. Sigmund calmly watched the hinges that kept the gate attached begin to start from the gate posts.

  “Elias!” he said. “Get everyone behind the barricades! I want all the men that Hanz and Gunter can spare to join us there!”

  Elias sprinted off again, almost relieved to be running messages rather than fighting. But he was sure that there would be much more fighting for him before the day was done.

  The press of beastmen on the palisade was such that it began to creak dangerously and the men of the free companies started to run from the walls. A blood-splattered figure loomed up from the melee of bodies and Sigmund recognised Osric.

  “I need more men!” he roared but Sigmund had none. “Fall your men back in order to the barricades!”

  Sigmund grabbed Frantz and gave him the same orders. “Back!” he shouted above the chaos and din of battle. “Eel Street!”

  Frantz nodded and took twenty-seven in all back down the street. The gateposts snapped and through cracks in the gateway Sigmund could see the monstrous bull-men, their bodies splattered with human entrails and gore. He felt the spirit of the men begin to waver and stood up to give the order.

  “Fall back!” he shouted. “Fall back to the old wall!”

  Someone grabbed his forearm and Sigmund almost cut the man down—but it was Blik Short—with a dirty bandage around his thigh. There was such a din it was almost impossible to make the words out. “We will cover your retreat!” he shouted.

  “No—fall back!” Sigmund bellowed, and hurried onto the next group of men.

  As the men of Helmstrumburg fell back, beastmen scrambled over the broken palisade and charged in—striking left and right. Instead of an orderly retreat men dropped their weapons and started to flee. The beastmen struck them down as they ran, and the whole retreat threatened to turn into a rout until Osric rallied twenty of his men with Baltzer drumming the retreat. They formed a bottleneck across the end of Eel Street and presented a thicket of iron blades.

  On Altdorf Street, Sigmund managed to rally enough men to block the top of the street. They battled the beastmen that came streaming through the shattered gateway. As he fought, Sigmund saw the minotaurs that had shattered the gate push through their way through the crowd of beastmen.

  The men he had rallied began to scream in terror at the size of the creatures and Sigmund thought he would lose control of his troops until he saw a squad of men stride out through the chaos and stand across the path of the bull-men like a wall.

  Blik Short limped into place across the top of Altdorf Street keeping in step with the ten men he had left. The bull-men saw them and raised their huge axes and charged.

  “Hold fast!” Blik shouted but his men needed no orders. Between them these veterans had seen a hundred battles, and survived. If this was to be their final battle then it was a good way to die. The men of the Old Unbreakables gripped their swords and shields and readied themselves.

  This was a good day to die.

  Under cover of the Old Unbreakables, Sigmund managed to cover the retreat of the men to the barricades on Altdorf Street.

  Osric’s men slowly retreated down Eel Street, where the banner of the Helmstrumburg Ha
lberdiers flew. The men of Gunter’s squad cheered Osric’s men as they fell back and then scampered through a hole that had been left in the barricade.

  The beastmen thought they had been pursuing the halberdiers, but suddenly they were faced with a barricade over eight feet tall, bristling with halberds and handguns. Vostig gave the order and his handgunners fired—shredding the front rank of beastmen. Twenty spearmen then burst out from the houses behind them and fell upon the beastmen. The surrounded attackers barely had a chance to raise their weapons in defence before they were cut down.

  On Tanner Lane Gaston stood with twenty halberdiers covering the retreat of the men that fled from the palisade. A few halberdiers from Osric’s company joined them, but the men of the free companies did not stop running until they were behind the barricade—but it was far from finished.

  Gruff Spennsweich had refused to join any of the free companies, determined to stand and protect his daughters: but events had spiralled beyond his control and there were shouts in the street—as men fled from the palisade.

  Gruff ran to the front door. He could see men running down the street and the horned heads of beastmen running down from the Altdorf Gate. He ran inside and fetched a wood axe. “Out!” he shouted and his girls ran out into the street as Gruff stood in the road to cover their retreat.

  Valina dragged the twins out and they ran down the road—civilians and free company all streaming back behind the barricades—while Gaston’s men blocked the advance of the beastmen. Gruff had one thought—to protect his daughters, and even as Gaston’s men pulled back, Gruff stood in the street, lashing out at any beastmen that came within reach.

  “Get back!” Gaston shouted, and he tried to pull the farmer back, but Gruff shook him off. He had been driven from his fields and now he refused to be driven anymore.

  Valina could see her father in the street. She turned and shouted for him to run away but he stood in the street, keeping three beastmen back with sheer ferocity and blind courage. But as he fought, a huge creature came behind him and struck him on the base of his neck. There was a spurt of blood and the farmer fell, his body quickly lost to view under the trampling hooves of the beastmen.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  To the herds of beastmen the narrow streets seemed like tunnels. People barricaded themselves into their houses, or hid upstairs and hurled stones, pots and even pieces of furniture down onto the startled beastmen from the upper storeys.

  Bewildered for a moment by the tunnel of houses and the hail of missiles that rained down on them, the beastmen’s attack started to falter, allowing the last defenders time to scramble to safety. But it didn’t take the beastmen long to react to their new circumstances, and they started going from house to house, battering down doors and falling on the trapped populace with claw, horn and blade.

  The screams of the dying chilled the defenders at the barricades, but they were forced to endure the savage spectacle for nearly half an hour, as living people were flung from the upper windows to the waiting packs of hounds below, who fell on them with horrific hunger, tearing them apart before the helpless defenders.

  Vasir looked away as an old man and his wife were lowered from the upper windows of their house. The old man was wearing a nightgown, his wife was half-naked. He was calling on Sigmar, but she was screaming incoherently. Just inches below them the snouts of the jumping hounds gnashed and slavered—but the beastmen suspended them just out of reach and the pack of hounds started to bite and snap at each other in their excitement.

  “They’re doing this for sport!” Vasir cursed, and cursed the fact that he had used up all his arrows.

  “They’re worse than animals,” Hanz said but none of them went out to help. They stood helpless. Some made the sign of Sigmar. When the old man and his wife were dropped into the pack, Hanz and Vasir looked away but they could not stop their ears. The screams were mercifully short, but the horrific sounds of slavering and rending lasted for nearly a minute.

  On Eel Street only Edmunt stood atop the barricade and watched the whole grisly spectacle, Butcher in one hand and the banner of the Helmstrumburg Halberdiers in the other.

  He devoured each detail, remembered each scream, the face of each Helmstrumburger that died at the hands of these creatures. His stony glare did not shy away from even the most horrific of details. Each horror would be returned, he vowed silently, each death paid for ten-fold.

  Butcher swung back and forth as he warmed up his wrist. “There is a lot of work to do today,” he told the heavy axe head, and the smile of sharpened steel flashed in the sunlight.

  When the beastmen had cleared the last defenders from the houses, they surged up Altdorf Street, the charge led by the slavering hounds that bounded up and onto the barricade, snapping and tearing at the defenders’ throats.

  Hanz held his shield in front of him and braced his spear-butt under his foot. The static spear blade caught a hound full in the chest, and the momentum of its leap impaled the beast, but even as the blade drove deep into its organs, its snapping jaws closed with a snap onto his forearm.

  Hanz let out a horrified yelp of pain as the razor-sharp fangs sliced through skin, flesh and bone. He dropped his shield in horror, seeing his right arm ending in a bleeding stump. Another hound leapt over the barricade and caught him full in the throat. Hanz flew back into the crowded defenders, the spined hound still goring at his exposed neck. The men of the free companies fell back in horror but Sigmund leapt forward with sword drawn and stabbed the loathsome creature three times before it died.

  Sigmund kicked it away from Hanz but the Vorrsheimer’s throat had been ripped out, the only thing keeping his head onto his shoulders was a few blood-smeared vertebrae.

  It was a testament to the discipline of the Vorrsheimers that they held the initial assault and the death of their sergeant, but at the crucial moment that Hanz was punched from the line, Edmunt stepped forward, Butcher lashing out to left and right: spraying blood and brains over defender and attacker alike.

  The beastmen shied back from him: cowed by the ferocity of a warrior who was not afraid to die: another child of the forests, meeting wildness with wildness, ferocity with hatred. Behind the fury of his onslaught, the line of spearmen held their footing and drove the last few hounds back. As the beastmen struggled to clamber up to them, there was a hedge of shields and spear blades against them.

  Sigmund led the men on Altdorf Street, the halberdiers lashing out at the leaping hounds, until blood ran down their shafts and stuck to their hands.

  No one spoke, their breaths came in ragged gasps as their arms began to hang from their shoulders. Sigmund stabbed and cut, but a shard of a shattered sword caught him on the brow and opened up a cut, and within moments the streaming blood began to blind him and he fell back.

  “Water!” Sigmund shouted as he tried to wipe the blood from his eyes. He felt firm hands guiding him back, away from the barricade, and then a cool wet cloth wiped away the blood and renewed his sight.

  “Osric!” he said in astonishment, but the sergeant would not look him in the eye, and turned and hurried back to the barricades. A short fat man ran to Sigmund and started to lead him back to the crude field station in the front room of a nearby inn. It was Fat Gulpen, the town crier—his fat face now topped with an ill-fitting steel cap.

  Sigmund shook him off. “It’s just a scratch! Bind it up!”

  There was a stinging pain as Fat Gulpen started to wrap a dirty cloth around his head.

  “Hurry!” Sigmund snapped. “I need to get back!”

  While the barricades on Altdorf Street and Eel Street held the initial onslaught, the charge of the hounds on Tanner Lane drove the men there from the barricade, and they began to stream back to the second line.

  The daughters of Gruff Spennsweig helped to drag wounded men back, but one man that Valina was helping was caught by the foot by a spined hound, whose skin was splitting to reveal ribs. She screamed and let go of the man. The hounds fell on him and
in an instant he was hidden by the snarling pack.

  As she ran, Valina felt something hold her back. She screamed, turned and saw the same spined hound had clamped its jaws upon her skirts. She yanked and the dress tore and she was free. She started to sprint back towards the second barricade but felt jaws clamp themselves onto her left ankle. She tripped and fell and put her hands over her head, but the gesture was futile. For an instant she was aware of fetid breath and paws as the creatures leaped onto her—and then she screamed.

  * * *

  On Tanner Lane, Gaston grabbed running men and forced them to stand and fight. As dying men screamed it looked as if the whole retreat might collapse into chaos, but he managed to rally twenty men to hold the street.

  After the hounds came the beastmen, clambering over the abandoned barricade, and charging.

  The spiral-horned creature that had cut down Gruff picked out Gaston and charged. Gaston saw the raised axe and felt an incredible calm. This is it, you are going to die, a voice in his head said, just make sure you take him with you.

  Gaston looked like a hero of old, with his long moustaches, as he drew his sword and stood ready. The axe went up for the killing blow and Gaston leapt forward, driving his weapon into the face of the spiral-horned creature. All the force from his legs was transferred onto the point of the sword and the spiral-horned head jerked backwards and was almost torn from the body.