“If I could only be certain, I would surely say so.”
“The rock slope, where the boulders were rolled on us. Did you check it then?”
“Let me think. It can’t be the case that I never ever looked once. Can it?”
“Do you know, or don’t you?”
He lit like a chimney fire. “It must be. He has it!”
“Who?”
“The chieftain.”
“What?”
“The chieftain. I must have lost it near the camp. That is most likely, yes? We spent more time there than anywhere else. And yes, yes, now that I contemplate it, I did, I did take it out and look at it on the night when—on the night when I made Franziskus here a lieutenant. I remember now. I was thinking, thinking that it was an irony. Yes? That an act of dishonesty on my part, could lead to such a righteous result, as this fine fellow here regaining his honour.
“My theft was his redemption. Is that not so, Franziskus?”
“Redemption is neither yours to grant, nor mine to claim.”
Jonas faltered for a moment then his confession recovered its tumbling momentum. “At any rate, then. Yes, yes, whether it was a true thought, or more of my pervading lunacy, it remains that I did take the ring from this pocket and hold it up to peer into the red translucency of its ruby. And I thought, how lovely, yet how like blood. Therein were all the contradictions of our precarious existence.”
“Any more philosophy and I’ll forget I’m not a murderess.”
“Oh Angelika. You are as strange and precious as your lost gem.” He reached out to trace the tip of his finger along her face. It took all of her restraint not to catch it between her sharp incisors and try to gnaw it off.
“But lost it is not. Or rather, we know where it is. For when Franziskus and I spied on the enemy army as it combed our camp, we saw this chieftain bend down and pick up something glinting from the ground. Did we not, Franziskus?”
“I saw him stab through a soldier’s heart with his fighting claws.”
“Yes, yes.” Jonas was impatient. “But we saw that other thing happen, too.”
“That’s your story?” Angelika asked.
“Yes, yes, I saw it, the chieftain has it. We need only slay him, and then you’ll get it back.”
“You absolutely expect us to believe that, don’t you?”
“It had to have happened.”
She laid her own hand aside his face, letting her nails gouge in. “I thought you a liar, but you are much worse than that. Truth and falsehood—you haven’t a glimmer of the difference between them.”
He slipped sulkily free of her touch. “How much more prostration do you require of me?”
“That’s the exact tale you spun before, Rassau. That the chieftain stooped to pluck it up.”
“But this time it happened. Yes, yes, it’s the story of the boy who cried wolf. But it happened. Franziskus can tell you.”
“It didn’t, Jonas.”
“It did, it did, it did.” Fever gleamed in his pupils. “The chieftain has it. Together we’ll slay him, and you’ll see. How could it be otherwise?”
Angelika patted his bobbing head. Wearing false, bored stares, she and Franziskus strode past Emil, along the length of the tunnel, and out into the open. They moved up to the ridge wall, leaning there, so as not to be seen from above.
“To state the obvious, he’s gone mad,” said Franziskus.
“I suspect it’s temporary.”
“Something’s snapped him. Angelika, what did you do to him, out there?”
“Just a wee knife to the throat. Nothing a man shouldn’t be able to handle.”
“You’ve untethered him completely.”
“His moorings were uncertain long before I sawed at them.”
They noticed that the wind had warmed. Fog swelled from the snow as it melted into slush. Soon its wisps enveloped the lower reaches of the surrounding hills.
Angelika stepped into the thick, obscuring mist. “You take care of them,” she said. “Get as many of them home as you can, Lieutenant Weibe.”
“Angelika!” He couldn’t see her. “Where are you going?”
“Where do you think?” said the fog. “To get my ring back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Angelika had never been in a thicker haze. She could barely see her feet as they imprinted themselves in the sodden earth. Though she thought she could navigate through the hills by feel and memory, she soon grew completely disoriented. She’d travel for a few yards along a trail, only to wind up on a slope heading where—east, west? Toward the camp? Into the arms of the Kurgan, and their baying hound?
She forced herself to stop, until the fog dispersed a little. If fate favoured her, it would burn off slowly, leaving remnants to hide her from barbarian sentries. Angelika occupied her mind by evaluating the sanity of her present course.
Jonas’ new account of the ring’s whereabouts was deranged in both detail and intent. Nonetheless, it contained a gossamer filament of reason. Jonas had been in the camp by the stream longer than he’d been anywhere else. The first, most logical place to look for it was at the spot where he’d pitched his tent. Angelika understood that the chances of her finding it there were slim. She did not like to think what she would find herself doing if she didn’t. Would she really retrace the expedition’s entire journey, combing through dirt and grasses the entire way, in a vast mountain range packed to the crannies with slavering barbarian warriors?
She had to admit to herself that she just might.
Five years of her life was worth a few months of fruitless searching, just in case. But first she would check the camp.
The fog loosened its grip and the hills revealed themselves around her like mute giants coming quietly from slumber. Now that she could see where she was going, she made a hasty meander to the site. Angelika headed straight to Jonas’ spot and knelt to minutely examine the rocks and dirt. Now the grey sky impeded her work; if there’d been sunlight, either the gem or its fine gold setting might flash up at her.
A pained growl rumbled out. It came from the east—the direction of the Kurgan horde. She sprang up, dagger in hand. It couldn’t be too far away. She heard a slapping sound, of a flat object slowly pressing into the slushy ground. Then again. Again. A wall of fog slipped toward her; within it resolved an abbreviated, shambling silhouette.
The fog wall disgorged its contents: Bodo the halfling staggered blindly onward, attracted by the sound of her searching. He’d escaped and returned to camp.
Angelika’s breath halted.
Bodo was alive but sadistically mutilated. One eyelid had been sewn shut; the other, its white replaced by red, sewn open. His ears had been cut off, and his head patchily shaven. Something horrible had happened to his toes. He moaned in agony, revealing raw sockets where his teeth should have been. His tormentors had left him with only his trousers; his naked torso exposed a dozen deep and raking wounds.
He fell at her feet, murmuring miserably.
She stooped to take him into her arms. He was small but muscular, and as heavy as she expected. Fear impelled her on and filled her limbs with surprising strength. The Chaos forces had let him go for a purpose. They wanted Bodo to find his comrades. Maybe they sought only to demoralise the Stirlanders, by sending them a sample of their handiwork. More likely, they would track him, perhaps with that monster hound of theirs.
Bodo would never have found the hideout on his own. By taking Bodo back there, she’d be endangering everyone.
She stopped, between a pair of scraggy hills. She listened for Kurgan boots, or the snufling of a lupine Chaos beast.
They had no means of treating his wounds. In all likelihood, he would die, and soon.
She should not take him back. Rather, she should show him genuine mercy, and pull the keen edge of her dagger across his throat.
To do it would require an honesty too bitter even for her. She lurched further along the trail.
* * *
Bodo’s moans i
ncreased in pitch as Angelika drew closer to the tunnel mouth. The slush had completely melted, pooling into shallow puddles. The halfling’s weight in her arms left her little chance to detour around them. Cold water seeped in through a newfound break in the stitching between sole and boot.
Filch scrambled from the tunnel opening, with Merwin hard after him, crying Bodo’s name. Worried about sentries, Angelika waved him back. Undeterred, his friends ran to her side. She gave in to exhaustion, lowering Bodo’s body into their arms. They bore him like a stretcher toward the tunnel—Filch carrying his arms, Merwin, his flat-footed legs. Soldiers spilled carelessly out, forming a cordon around him.
“Get inside,” Angelika called. Freed of the burden of Bodo’s body, she wove and lost her balance. Franziskus appeared beside her, to keep her from falling. “Tell them to get inside,” she said to him.
“Archers,” Franziskus shouted. “Back in the tunnel.”
His men tore themselves away, but stopped a few inches inside the tunnel. Impeded by well-wishers ringing around them, Filch and Merwin stopped, lowering Bodo to the soppy earth. “Those beasts,” Merwin bawled. “Savages. Loathsome, torturing pigs.”
The soldiers muttered their outrage. A swordsman whose name Angelika had never learned tended the halfling, cleaning his wounds with the pooling water he’d been laid in. Behind him, another unfurled the company’s final length of clean bandage.
Jonas levelled his shoulders and firmed his jaw. “He shall be avenged, I swear it.”
Mattes lunged at him, shoving him back, away from Bodo. “You lied again.”
Jonas, taken off guard, slid in the mud. Speedily finding his balance, he pulled his sabre from its sheath. A serpent’s grin crawled across his face. “You wish to challenge me, Mattes?”
Mattes left his weapon in its scabbard and ran at Jonas, fists milling the air before him. Saar and Madelung grappled him, holding him back. He aimed a wad of spittle at his commander, but it fell lazily to the ground, far short of its goal. His face purpled in helpless fury. “You’re five times the swordsman I am, Jonas Rassau, but still I’ll fight you.”
Emil interposed himself between Jonas and the struggling men. “Leave this to me, sir,” he said.
Drizzle spattered down on them.
Jonas stayed ready to receive a charge. “I will not, sergeant. Stand aside.”
“Discipline’s a matter for the sergeant, sir.” He placed his nose within an inch of Mattes’. “Saar. Madelung. Let this man go. If he must have at someone, let him poke at me.”
Mattes’ restrainers slipped hesitantly aside. The leathery drumsman thrust out his chin, offering Emil a target, if he wanted it. “You’ll defend this fable-teller? He clutched at all our hearts with his story of Bodo’s heroic demise.” He directed an aside down at the semi-conscious halfling. “Did you know that you were dead, good fellow? Though it looks like you were instead left behind and tormented by the Kurgs, we know it can’t be so, because our commander says otherwise.”
“You’ve been trouble all along, Mattes,” Emil said, “but now you’ve taken it too far and I can’t let it go.”
“You saying he’s not a liar? That any of us can trust a word he utters?”
“I’ll smack that lip of yours open if you don’t button it now,” Emil replied.
A swordsman with a long mournful face moved to Mattes’ shoulder. “Then when you’re done, sergeant, you can smack mine, too. This one’s no leader, and you know he isn’t.”
“A lieutenant’s a lieutenant and a soldier’s only a soldier, and that’s all you need to know.”
“Stand aside, Emil,” said Jonas, “I’ll finish them both.”
Emil’s cheek twitched. “Sir it would be best if—”
Madelung planted his feet beside Mattes’. “He’ll have to deal with me, too, then.”
“So it’s open mutiny, is it?” Jonas traced a circle with the tip of his heavy sword. “How many more of you wish to accompany these three to Hell?”
“Sir…” said Emil.
“Any lies told,” shouted Jonas, “were for your benefit. Yes, our condition is hard. But we fight for freedom, against barbarians. How do you expect to win this battle if you do not believe in it? Are you too weak and cowardly to see that?”
Pushing the flat of his blade against Emil’s arm, he impelled his sergeant out of the way. He raised his sabre over Mattes’ head. The men beside him faded off. Mattes, glowering his defiance, stretched out his neck to facilitate the blow. Jonas wavered.
Then Angelika saw his fingers tighten around his sword hilt; he was ready to do it.
Jonas screeched, dropped his sabre, and bent down, rubbing the fingers of his weapon hand. The pommel of Angelika’s dagger had hit its mark. She strode up to retrieve her knife from the muck.
“That,” she said to Jonas, “was for your benefit. Now the rest of you, get in that cave, where you can bash each other’s brains till your hearts’ content, before—”
An unearthly yelping vibrated off the rocks and among the hills.
The Chaos reek returned.
Bodo stirred and thrashed, as if caught in a nightmare: “No! You should have left me.”
Angelika uttered her favourite curse word and dashed for the tunnel maw. “Inside,” she yelled. The archers retreated further into the passageway, making room for their comrades as they panicked across its threshold. “Franziskus. Where are you?” she called. He was right beside her.
Spasmed by fear, the humans had forgotten the halflings. Merwin and Filch knelt beside Bodo’s palpitating frame.
Mattes and Saar had been crammed side-by-side by the reckless press of men. They swapped glances, reached silent accord, and sprinted out to lift up Bodo between them. They returned, Filch and Merwin in their wake.
“Take him all the way back,” Angelika commanded.
Then the creature made itself apparent, squirming on distended, padded paws around the side of Mount Lemon. Angelika had heard a great lot of nonsense talk about Chaos and never knew which of the stories to believe. She’d heard the Kurgan took innocent beasts, like mountain lions and oxen, and deformed them with their dark sorcery. Supposedly, over the generations, they bred monstrousness into these animals, as one would breed fleetness into a racing dog or keenness of eye into a hunting falcon.
The thing they now beheld showed that the stories were true: at one time it, or an ancestor, had been a mastiff or other strong-jawed hound. Now it was a bloated, elongated thing moving sluggishly forward on four leprous limbs, bowed by the jiggling mass of its pink and naked torso. Wide, misshapen ears flared from the top of its boxy skull. They turned on stalks of fibrous muscle, detecting the gasps and shattered breaths of the men all around her. Long strands of viscous slobber dangled from its great, encasing jaw. Slow as a ruddering sea vessel, its gargantuan head turned their way. Tiny black orbs glistened and blinked at them, suspended in sockets of pale pus. A nubbled carpet of tongue rolled out of its mouth, panting eagerly up and down. With glacial inevitability, the creature plodded at them.
“Archers,” commanded Franziskus.
The Chelborgers formed a rank around the tunnel mouth.
Behind them, Saar fumbled with his tinder, to light the wick of his matchlock pistol.
“Fire!” Franziskus called to his archers. A volley shot crisply out to meet the Chaos hound. Arrows bounced from its rubbery flesh. One stuck briefly in the creature’s tongue. He slurped it into his mouth, and when the jaw gated open, it was gone. The beast continued, unimpeded.
“Ready,” yelled Franziskus.
Behind him, a swordsman unabashedly wept. The men arrayed near him shook him to his senses, so that he only whimpered.
“Aim,” said Franziskus. “Fire!”
The creature stomped close, blocking the day’s hazy light. All of the arrows found their target, but the hound was unfazed. It shook its head in momentary annoyance and padded nearer.
“Back. Back to the back,” Angelika called.
The creature tested its head into the tunnel opening. Steaming drool dropped and sizzled beneath it. It opened its mouth to bark at them exposing dozens of strange insectoid parasites hanging from the tissue of its gums. The hound pressed itself across the threshold, then stopped. The width of its shoulders had halted it. It growled its displeasure, tried to free itself, and wedged itself more thoroughly into the doorway. It whined pitifully, as if expecting one of its prospective meals to step up and free it.
“It’s stuck,” exclaimed Filch.
“It can’t get us.” chimed Merwin.
The hound shoved itself further into the tunnel, its bones wetly groaning with the effort. No one breathed.
“Get stuck again, get stuck again,” Filch begged.
“Come on, doggie, get stuck. Get stuck,” said Merwin.
“By Sigmar’s beard, will no one quiet those blooming halflings?” a soldier asked.
Deeper into the tunnel the creature slithered. Half-uttered prayers whispered through the passage.
“Valour, men, valour,” Jonas urged.
It oozed within sword’s-reach of the front rank.
“Stab it. Now!” ordered Jonas.
Madelung made a step up to spear it in the eye with his sabre. The hound dropped his mouth down over him. The fresh-faced warrior died without a scream, his bones crunching between the hound’s broad, crushing teeth. Sabres hacked down at the wattles of loose flesh wreathing its jaw but the creature continued chewing contentedly on Madelung’s body, crimson infusing its ropy slobber.
The soldiers gasped, appalled, and shrank closer into one another.
The hound retreated, forcing its constricted hulk of a torso backwards. Loose skin wrinkled and pulled against the tunnel wall. It pointed its head upwards, exposing its venous throat, positioning Madelung’s well-masticated remains to slide down its gullet.
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