Jonas’ face took on a resolute cast.
The barbarians broke from their parley, heading back toward the slope, and the Imperial troops’ hiding place. Jonas’ soldiers pushed themselves closer to the earth. The Kurgans moved in a roiling, half-ordered mass. None of the Stirlanders had ever seen their Kurgan foes in a casual and sportive state. Some picked up rocks to sail them pointlessly into the distance. Others grunted out the rough melodies of their clan war chants.
One small group struck up a sort of game. They would spit into the necks of the men ranked in front of them. Then, when a victim of the copious gobbing turned around with raised fist ready, they would each point at one another and savagely laugh. One annoyed recipient swung back a leg to kick a participant unerringly in the groin. As the Kurg doubled over, his friends erupted in sadistic amusement.
The chieftain, who now passed within a hundred feet of the Stirlanders, raised his axe and bellowed. Stifling their guffaws, the marauders marched sullenly on.
All but a few dozen of the barbarians had passed by the Imperials’ hiding spot, when a low-slung, dark-browed Kurgan separated from the pack to make straight for the briar stand.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Kurg slipped behind the briars, blocking himself from the view of his fellows. Pulling at his rancid loincloth, he squatted to relieve himself.
Halflings and archers wrenched and gagged. Franziskus slipped his sabre from its holster and crept out from the rocks. He scudded up into the blind spot of the preoccupied barbarian. When the marauder completed his crude ablutions, and was tugging at his breeches, Franziskus slammed his weapon’s heavy hand-guard into his temple. The Kurgan rose indignantly from his crouch, then pitched face-first into the briar. Franziskus waited until the rest of the barbarians were well up the slope, then hauled the limp-limbed Chaos minion from the thorny bushes. Filch skittered up to supply a pair of leathery thongs, with which they tightly bound his arms and ankles.
“Clever work, Franziskus,” said Jonas. “We’ll extract from him knowledge of the chieftain’s scheme.”
“Seems to me like they’re assembling the largest force they can, at which point they’ll attack Stirland again, all together,” said Franziskus.
“Yes, but it will be good to know it for a fact.” The last of the Chaos troops had disappeared over the ridge, presumably to rejoin their camp. Jonas cast a lost look after them. “What now, then? Where have our men gone?”
“Angelika was assigned that mound, yes?” Franziskus pointed to Mount Eel, a quarter of a mile to the north.
“You would know better than I.”
“She was,” said Filch.
“She’ll have gone there, to hide.”
“But last we saw of her, she was up on the ridge, with us. She could be anywhere. They could have slain her, or captured her.”
Franziskus idly examined his hands for signs of uncleanliness. “How else did your men know to hide? No, she’ll have somehow realised, before we did, that hundreds of Kurgs were about to rush down here, and warned them. I admit that I merely guess, but if we go to Mount Eel, I wager that’s where she’ll be.”
“You admire her greatly,” observed Jonas.
For this Franziskus supplied no answer.
Jonas nodded to him, and he ordered four of the archers to lift up the slumbering carcass of the careless Kurgan.
Half an hour later they reached the foot of Mount Eel.
The prisoner stirred as the archers put him down, so Fengler stooped to apply a fastidious chokehold, and he passed out again.
Jonas peered up. “I see nothing.”
“She said something about laying in a pit trap,” said Franziskus. “Wait here.” They watched as he footed it nimbly up the mound, scrutinised its terrain, then zeroed in on a place of interest. The ground moved and like cicadas wriggling from the earth, figures emerged from it. Franziskus and Angelika marched down, alongside Saar, Mattes, Pinkert and the sergeant.
“Where are the others?” Jonas asked him.
Raab explained; all was as Franziskus had assumed.
“What about Egerer?” Emil asked Jonas. “The others…?”
“Gone,” was all Jonas needed to say. He cleared his throat. “How then do we gather ourselves?”
“The sergeant kept a good survey map,” volunteered Angelika. “He had the men mark on it the traps they laid. From looking at it, it’s fairly clear which ones could be used as hiding spots. I’ll take it and go and collect up the patrols. Meanwhile, you head to that tunnel, there.” She pointed to the rock wall, at the foot of the ridge.
“Tunnel?” said Jonas.
“See that dark spot, there? It looks like just a shadow, but I’m certain it’s the entrance to a dwarf tunnel. Disused, we’d better hope. Blocked off, probably, but I’m hoping there’s enough of it left to shelter us all. We can’t camp in the open anymore, that’s for certain.”
Jonas peered at the dark shape Angelika had shown him. “I can barely see it.”
“That’s what I like about it. Go on ahead, I’ll send the others to you as I come across them.”
They wended between hills to Angelika’s dark blot in the ridge wall. When they were within five hundred yards of it, they could see she’d been right. An artificial cave had been hammered into the rock there. Its opening was artfully blended into the granite’s ruts and corrugations, so it looked from a distance like a mere patch of shade. Once inside, they saw evidence of exacting dwarf workmanship. Near the threshold there was a groove, where a portcullis once fell. The remains of its chain and pulley mechanism sat a few yards away.
Emil kicked at it in disappointment; a functioning iron gate would have been a great boon. Franziskus moved back into the tunnel, stopping when the layer of cobwebs grew too thick to penetrate. Behind them, in the darkness, he was pretty certain he saw an unreachable section of collapsed rock, impeding further movement. If he knew his dwarf archaeology, it hail been sealed on purpose, hundreds of years ago. He sighed in relief. The incident in the gorge had sapped his appetite for further dwarf encounters.
Over the next few hours, patrol teams drifted in. The seasoned warriors settled themselves down for an immediate nap. Little was said.
Franziskus felt sorry for Jonas, the target of furtive and reproachful glances. Rassau paced the truncated passageway, oblivious to the unease his movements bred. Franziskus could tell he was rehearsing a speech—composing, rejecting, revising, and rejecting again his opening lines.
He took a risk and sidled up to his commander.
“You mean to address the men?” he asked, too low for others to hear.
“Hope leeches away from us like blood from a wound. I must staunch the flow.”
Franziskus knew not to say anything, instead deploying his best doubtful face. Months on the trail with Angelika had honed it to keen perfection.
“You think not?” asked Jonas.
“After a certain point, words do more harm than good.”
“Yes,” agreed Jonas. “Something more concrete, perhaps.”
Angelika arrived, bringing with her the men from the furthest hill. The sky outside was indigo, surrendering to starry black.
“A fire?” Jonas asked her.
“Very small, as far to the back as we can get.”
She set herself the task of clearing the cobwebs, so they could hide deeper in. Filch’s busy fingers made a tiny fire.
Jonas slapped the Kurgan awake and dragged him to the blockage. He kicked the marauder in the throat and drew a short knife from his belt. “You will confess,” he commanded. “You will tell us all of your filthy master’s plans.”
The Kurgan yelped defiantly in the harsh language of the Wastes. With eager fists, the soldiers gathered around him.
Angelika withdrew without comment to the mouth of the tunnel.
Franziskus came moments after, ashen. “Can’t we stop them?”
“The sound of screaming’s an awful giveaway, but you think they’ll listen?
”
The howls from the back of the passage grew in wretchedness. “I told him already what that chieftain likely intends,” said Franziskus.
“The plan is not mysterious, no.”
“And unless he speaks Reikspiel, he couldn’t tell us anything, even if he wanted to.”
“Also true.”
A shriek tore the air, then was abruptly smothered.
“Even when something might come of it, a man of good conscience despises torture. But this…” he persisted.
“They’re angry, Franziskus. Not to mention petrified.”
“Does that make it right?”
“No, just inevitable.”
Twenty minutes later, Jonas approached them, his hands thick with blood. Beneath it, his knuckles were cut. His blows had exacted a greater toll on the Kurgan, whom his men dragged out to dump past the tunnel’s edge. “Take that a good way off,” he told the men. Franziskus saw in the soldiers a crazed and fervent complicity. Jonas had won them back, without words—though he suspected it would wear off, as strong drink always did.
“He kept repeating two words, over and over,” said Jonas. “Ortak Nalgar, I think it was. Ortak Nalgar. Either of you know any Kurgan?”
Angelika shrugged.
“Maybe we heard those words before,” said Franziskus, “when we spied on them. I think the one the chieftain killed kept using them, too.”
“They sound familiar now that you say it.”
“I could be wrong, but from the intonation, I think it was maybe a term of address. The chieftain’s name.”
“So the chieftain is called Ortak Nalgar?”
“Merely a surmise,” said Franziskus.
“Ortak Nalgar,” said Jonas, testing the name, rolling it about. “Ortak Nalgar.”
“If true, a sublimely useful piece of intelligence,” said Angelika. “Now if we want to write him a letter, we know the proper salutation.”
Franziskus hawked phlegm around his throat. “What else did you learn, Jonas?”
“It was hard to tell with only his beastly language to yammer in,” said Jonas, “but I’d say that chieftain is waiting to amass a single great force, and take it sweeping down on Stirland.”
They buried their captive in a depthless grave less than a hundred yards from the tunnel mouth. It was dug fast, the barbarian dumped carelessly in. Before spading loose dirt over him, his diggers spat on his corpse. It was more burial than the Gerolsbruchers who’d died on the ridge had been given. Angelika stood grumpily by, anticipating the thrum of Kurgan war horns. When the men were done, she hushed them, herding them back into the safety of the dwarven passageway, as a goose would shoo her goslings.
She was the last one back in. Jonas approached her, a question on his lips. Angelika braced herself for some new idiocy.
“We should clear the blockage,” he said.
She turned her face away, so the soldiers couldn’t see it. “Whatever for?”
“Perhaps it leads somewhere,” he said. “It could go all the way through this ridge, allowing us ingress into the enemy camp.”
“I don’t think that’s where we wish to be, lieutenant.”
“Mmm,” said Jonas.
“Besides, where would we stack the rocks? We’d expose ourselves every time we haul one out.”
“We’ve got to do something.”
“Let’s dream up a halfway intelligent scheme, and do that instead.”
Jonas seated himself at the tunnel threshold. His fingers tapped out an arrhythmic beat against his knee. After a few moments of fidgeting, he uncurled the map of the valley’s hill mounds, which he’d liberated from Emil. That he studied for a quarter of an hour. Then he pushed up to his feet and paced the tunnel. Finally he struck his pose, the one he adopted in preface to a bout of thrilling oratory.
Angelika pressed her fingernails into her palms.
Jonas aimed his words at the two halflings, who’d desolately propped themselves on a whitish bundle. Angelika couldn’t tell what it was, until she realised they’d taken the old cobwebs and rolled them together, industriously compacting them into a pillow of singular unpleasantness.
“You were separated from us when your friend Bodo met his end?” Jonas confirmed.
“It was like you was swallowed by the clouds,” said Filch.
Then I’ve committed a gross omission. Let me tell you of his heroism, that we might all take inspiration in this moment of dread. Bodo and I staggered together through the clouds, with Egerer, and the other swordsmen who did not return with us. Suddenly we passed into a clear spot, and there before us were half a dozen of the largest, most fearsome barbarians you would ever care to look upon.
“I’ve done my best to seem brave, so’s to stand as an example to the rest of you. Now though, I don’t mind saying that any fighting man is scared, and it’s no shame to say so. The only shame is in letting the fear rule you, instead of taking it and making a flame in your heart, to push you to further glory.
“Well, I might have thought that at the time, but my body would not obey me, as these six mighty men came at me with their flailing axes cutting the miserly air up on that ridge. But Bodo—Bodo, though he was half my size, though he was not a trained man of arms, but a simple butcher—his body had the courage mine, for that instant, lacked. And he impelled himself onward, bowling into them, taking the disadvantage of his size and using it against them.
“He ran through the legs of the lead Kurg, forcing him to turn, and then the others swung, and before any of them knew it, they were hacking and cutting away at one another’s flesh, as Bodo, from behind and below them, added his short sword to the carnage. Bang! One of them goes down! Bom! And then another! All of it flashes before us in an instant, and four of them are lying dead on the top of that ridge.
“I tell you, there was no moment in all my career as a fighting man that I felt prouder of a comrade. And it was his example that restored my own nerve. And after that, I don’t mind saying, my sabre rang its tune against them, and took a toll of its own.
“It was then that good dauntless Bodo was slain, as more of them poured on, and one took him from the front and another from the side. Yet even as he died, he tripped one of his murderers, and the men fell before him, and as the last blood leaked from his side, he took the edge of his blade and swiped it against the throat of he who’d impaled him.
“Together Egerer, myself and the others, we wiped out every Kurg who’d so much as breathed on that great and tiny martyr, your friend Bodo. He died a hero, Filch and Merwin. Know that. Know it, and take the tidings home to Hochsmoor, that he might be celebrated in the hallowed place that birthed him.”
Angelika observed the men as they resisted Jonas’ eloquence, shifting guardedly, searching each other for indications of belief. Then they’d given in, their postures folding toward him. Now more than a few sniffled or wiped at their eyes, a condition which could not be fully explained by the glacial draft now mounting an incursion into the tunnel.
It was not the mere unreality of Jonas’ speeches that caused him trouble, Angelika reflected. The truth wouldn’t seem so bad, if it weren’t for the touching beauty of his lies.
That night, between the hours of three and four, a monstrous baying tolled through the hills outside the tunnel entrance. Angelika was awake already; Franziskus jarred instantly from his slumbers. Jonas leapt to the mouth of the passage. Stars faintly twinkled in the dark and blanketing sky; all before them was blackness. The soft skin of Angelika’s neck crawled. They detected a wrong and distant odour.
“Chaos,” she said.
The baying, reminiscent of both a hound and a wolf, yet containing other elements entirely, chilled and burned them.
“That’s why they didn’t leave marauders to patrol for us,” Angelika said. “They’ve got something else to do the job for them.”
“How do we fight it?” asked Jonas.
“Pray we don’t have to, that’s how.”
“Douse that fire
,” he hissed, down the passage.
They listened for another iteration of the sound. None came.
“Is that a good sign?” Jonas asked.
“With that force we cannot… With the enemy—” Angelika ceased her euphemising. “With Chaos,” she said, “any sign is ominous.”
“What do we do?” Jonas repeated.
“Nothing,” said Angelika. “For the moment, at least, we’re trapped.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The ravenous growls of the unseen monster kept the tunnel’s inhabitants sleepless until dawn. Then the jarring presence of Chaos receded, leaving the Gerolsbruch Swordsmen pale and shivering.
Angelika poured water from her canteen onto her palms and clapped it onto her face. Her head seemed light, yet insupportable. Propped against the tunnel wall, she tried in vain to steal some sleep. Instead a restless energy filled her.
She stepped over the sleeping forms of Jonas and Franziskus; the former snored with his head buttressed on the latter’s fine-boned shoulder. Behind them, deeper into the tunnel’s gloom, exhaustion had taken the other soldiers. She would walk out a bit, and stand sentry. Her guess was that they were in immediate danger only when the Chaos feeling was on them. But surely there would be lookouts posted on the ridge by now—in the sangar if nowhere else. If they went too far out into the hills, at least in any numbers, they’d be seen. The war horns would trumpet, calling down any combination of Kurgs and daemons.
What should they do now? There were now thirty-eight in their party, measured against an entire army a mere ridgeline away, its strength growing daily. Even the only half-sensical option, escape, appeared daunting at best. Yet Jonas would still want to stay, and attempt some gambit against them. She and Franziskus could slip away, she was confident of that. Perhaps it was time to bow to fate’s cruelty, and accept that her ring was gone. That would abandon the Gerolsbruchers to Jonas’ whims, and therefore to nearly certain doom. She had promised to help. And an idiotic promise was a promise nonetheless.
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