by Robert Earl
Stirland’s horse whinnied in fright and reared back onto its hind legs. The count saw a blur of stirrups and milling hooves before the jarring impact of his fall splintered his vision into a thousand dancing stars.
He wasn’t stunned for long. The spasming corpse of the beastman filled the count’s senses with the stink of ammonia and rotten meat. The first thing he saw when his vision cleared were the parasites that had already started to swarm from the thing’s filth-matted fur.
Stirland’s gorge rose as he staggered clear. He spat out a mouthful of blood and bile even as he drew his sword. Then, blinking blood from his eyes, he squared his shoulders and prepared to take charge of the battle.
“My lord!” somebody screamed at him.
Stirland turned to see one of the hunt master’s lads waving a spear towards him. The man’s face was pale and blood spattered, and his eyes were wide with fear.
It took Stirland a split second to realise that the man wasn’t pointing the spear at him. He was pointing it at something behind him.
The count turned, just in time to see the nightmare vision of horns, fangs and rotten fur that loomed over him. It had already swung its axe back, ready to deliver a killing blow.
Too stunned to think properly, the count reacted purely by reflex. He was moving before he knew it, rolling beneath the scything blow of the beastman’s arms, and springing back to his feet behind it.
Caught off-balance by the murderous momentum of its attack, the beastman staggered as it turned, and Stirland pounced. His sabre blurred in a backhanded stroke that sent the entire length of its razor edge sawing through hair, hide, muscle and bone.
The blade finished its work in a spray of black blood and Stirland leapt clear. His enemy tried to follow him. Its cloven hoofs managed two faltering steps. Then, with a sticky inevitability, the misshapen lump of its severed head slid from its shoulders and toppled to the ground.
By the time the rest of the corpse had thudded down beside it, Stirland was already peering around him, evaluating, planning, ready to take control.
He flicked the blood from his blade with the unconscious gesture of a cat flicking water from its tail, and chewed his bottom lip as he watched the battle that was raging through the forest around him. It was like a scene from some hellish ballroom. Half-seen figures lunged and staggered through the blackness of the shadows and the stabbing columns of sunlight. Knots of combat tangled man and monster together, tighter than the participants of any quadrille. Meanwhile, the shrieking of the wounded and the cymbal rhythms of steel against steel provided a perfect, maddening music to the carnage.
Many of Stirland’s men had lost their mounts, and, even as he watched, another of them fell. He was dragged from his saddle as his horse reared up, her hooves windmilling at her tormentors, and her eyes white moons of terror in the darkness. Stirland saw the rider crash to the ground in an explosion of leaf litter. The rider’s sword flew from his nerveless fingers, and the two beasts who had felled him closed in with shrieks of glee.
By the time Stirland realised that he was charging, he was almost upon them; almost, but not quite. He saw an axe rise above the dazed rider. A beam of sunlight, catching the rusted metal, seemed to set the killing edge on fire. Before the blade could fall, Stirland roared, his challenge as wordless and animalistic as any made that day.
The two beastmen turned from their victim in time to see the lightning strike of Stirland’s sword. It crunched through the gristle of the nearest monster’s snout, and sliced deep across both of its eye sockets. The beastman leapt back too late, already blinded by blood and pain, and collided with its fellow, who snarled and pushed it away.
As it did so, Stirland struck again, a straight stab that sent the blade punching into the second beast-man’s stomach. The blow was so hard that Stirland bruised his hand against the cross guard of his sword. It was also strong enough to skewer the beast-man as neatly as a butterfly on a pin.
Stirland grinned with a terrible satisfaction as he stepped back, twisting the blade free from his victim’s falling body. Then he reached down, grabbed the fallen rider by his shoulder, and pulled him to his feet.
“No time to be laying about lad,” he said, grinning with a savage good humour, “there’s still work to be done.”
In a couple of moments, Stirland realised that their work was over. The beastmen had vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, slipping back into the vastness of the forest that had birthed them.
“Thank Sigmar,” Stirland muttered. Then, for the first time, he noticed his casualties, the men who lay bloodied among the corpses of their foes. One of them was propped up against a tree trunk, sobbing with pain, as his mate pressed a wad of moss into his wound. Another sat dazed on the ground, staring silently at the corpse of his horse, and the gutted remains of the horror that had killed it. Yet, although many were bleeding, it seemed that none had been killed. It was a miracle.
“Thank Sigmar,” Stirland muttered again, and touched the hammer-headed amulet that he wore around his neck. Then he looked up, and scowled.
“Thorvald,” he called to one of his men, who had regained his mount, and was turning the horse to pursue the retreating foe. “Thorvald!”
The rider looked back over his shoulder.
“Stay in formation,” the elector count snapped.
“Yes, my lord,” the man called reluctantly, and, reining his horse in, he turned back from his pursuit.
“Wait until I’ve found my horse. By Sigmar’s right fist we’ll run these vermin down before the day is through. Ah, there he is.” Stirland broke off as his gelding came trotting up to him. Its movements were still skittish, and its eyes rolled back and forth nervously. Stirland soothed it, holding its chin, and stroking it behind the ears, before swinging back into the saddle, “Had a fright, did you? Well, never mind. Nothing to worry about. Everybody seems to be here… Oh no.”
For the first time, he realised that, although most of his men seemed to have come through intact, Aver-land, that gods cursed, weak-kneed imbecile Averland, was nowhere to be seen.
“Averland!” he roared, making no attempt to hide the rage in his voice. “Where are you? Averland!”
“He’s up there, my lord,” one of his men said, waving his arm towards the forest. Stirland followed the man’s gesture, squinting as he peered into the darkness between the trees.
“Look up, my lord,” the huntsman said, and this time the contempt in his voice was unmistakeable.
Stirland looked up. Then he saw what his man was pointing at, and froze.
Of all the creatures Stirland had seen nesting in trees, his fellow elector count was the strangest. Aver-land’s legs dangled down on either side of a branch, his hose torn and his skinny knees bloodied by the scramble up into the tree. His fine cloak had gone, torn off by another branch, and his tunic was begrimed with dirt.
However, it was Averland’s face that broke Stirland’s self control.
Even as he started to laugh, he knew that he shouldn’t be doing it. He tried to stop, tried to bite back the mirth that was bursting out of him. He might even have managed it if it hadn’t been for Averland’s pale expression of comical terror.
“It isn’t funny,” Averland squeaked, and then fluttered his arms as he started to slip.
Stirland howled with laughter. Nor was he alone. The men all around were rocking in their saddles, the terror and the exhilaration of battle finding expression in their gale of hysterical laughter.
Stop it, Stirland told himself, his ribs aching. You have to stop laughing. It’s not funny.
Averland drew himself up into what was supposed to be an expression of dignity. He brushed his clothes down, and lifted himself up from his perch, so that he could stand and look down at the men. He put his hands on his hips and, with a haughty look on his face, slid one foot forward to complete the pose.
It was a mistake. His riding boots were as smooth as silk, even on the sole, and they whipped across the damp ba
rk as easily as skates across a frozen pond. He squawked, as one of his legs shot up into a hip-jarring high kick that pirouetted him around on the branch.
For a moment, Stirland thought that he was going to regain his balance, but it wasn’t to be. With a cry, the Elector Count of Averland tumbled from the tree and hit the floor with a bone-jarring thump. His dislodged cape came fluttering down after him.
The noise of his fall was quite inaudible over the roaring laughter of his host and the men.
Oh Sigmar, please help me to stop laughing, Stirland thought, tears streaming down his face. Think about the alliance.
His sides still shaking, he dismounted, and walked over to help Averland to his feet. The man looked up at him, his face white with rage, apart from the red patches that burned on his cheeks. Their heat was nothing compared to the furnace of hatred that burned in Averland’s eyes. It looked hot enough to melt iron, hot enough to melt sanity.
It turned the last of Stirland’s humour to ashes, and he bent to offer Averland his hand. For a moment, he thought that his fellow nobleman was going to refuse to take it. Then Averland blinked, the hatred in his eyes dulled, and he allowed Stirland to help him up.
“Glad to see you’re all right,” Stirland said, brushing leaves from Averland’s shoulders. “We were damned worried about you, Averland old man, damned worried. That’s why we were all so pleased to find you.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Averland said, his voice as cold as a razor blade. He looked around at the ring of men surrounding him, and, for a moment, that hatred was back in his eyes, like Morrslieb revealed by a sudden gap in the clouds.
It was enough to still the last of the laughter. The men shifted uncomfortably in their saddles. Stirland cleared his throat, and tried to think of something to say.
“Where’s the hunt master?” he finally asked, noticing that the old man was not among the onlookers.
Their silence grew even more uncomfortable.
“He’s with his hounds, my lord, down in the gulley.”
“Well, I’d better go and talk to him,” Stirland said. “Coming with me, Averland?”
The other elector grunted, and followed in Stir-land’s wake. They found the hunt master and his pack of hounds in the ravine from where the beastmen had sprung their ambush. Nellie, the hound that had drawn the first blood of the fight, was in the midst of them.
She lay panting, her broken body cushioned on a mat of thorns. The grey fur of her muzzle was dark with the blood of her enemies, and her torn and splintered body was wet with her own blood. One eye was gone, the socket closed with bloody tears. The eye that remained rolled in mute agony.
Her pack gathered around her. She had been mother to some, grandmother to others. At first, they had licked her wounds, whining as they had cleaned the filth from the gouge marks that had broken her. Now, as her agony drew to an end, they sat and howled, their voices mingling into a chorus of loss that echoed through the dark labyrinth of the forest.
The hunt master sat among them, his gnarled hand stroking the patch of unbroken fur beneath Nellie’s chin. Although his voice was warm and soothing, his face was sodden with tears. They made rivers of the furrowed lines of his face, before dripping down to mix with Nellie’s blood.
Stirland swallowed, blinked and looked away. For the first time in his life, he felt old. The joy of the hunt, which usually sang through his whole being after the slaughter, was missing. He felt tired and sick, and his blood felt as though it was running as slowly as sap in the winter.
He sighed, and turned back to watch Nellie breathe out her last, long breath. Then she lay still.
The hunt master stroked her for a moment more, and then thumbed her eyelid closed, and stood up, his face shining in the forest gloom.
“We’ll take her back with us,” Stirland told him, grasping the man by the shoulder. “Have the lads make a bier, and we’ll give her a proper send-off. If ever a hound deserved to be praised into Sigmar’s halls, it’s that one.”
“Thank you, my lord,” the hunt master said, pride straightening his back, even though tears still dripped into the tangle of his beard.
“Make a bier?” Averland asked, looking at Stirland as if he’d gone mad. “We don’t have time for that. You saw those things, those horrible, horrible things.” He paused and wiped a shaking hand across his brow. “They’re no better than filthy Strigany.”
“Yes, we saw them,” Stirland told him, “saw them, killed them and drove them off. We’ll hunt them down though, don’t you worry.”
Averland’s mouth fell open, and he edged backwards. Now, it wasn’t rage in his eyes, it was panic.
“I mean,” Stirland said, embarrassed by his fellow nobleman’s cowardice, “we’ll return to the castle tonight. It’s too late, and we have injured men and hounds.”
“We should go now,” Averland insisted.
“It won’t take a minute to make a bier.”
“For Sigmar’s sake, Stirland, it’s only a damned dog.”
“Yes,” Stirland said, “for Sigmar’s sake.”
“I mean look… look at it.” Averland strode past the gamekeeper, brushed past the hounds and pointed. “The damned thing’s dead.”
To make his point, Averland drew back his leg, and, before Stirland realised what he was going to do, he kicked the dog’s body.
Had he not been so shocked, Stirland might have intervened in time. As it was, Averland, nineteenth elector count of his line, turned from kicking the dog to face the full force of the fist that the hunt master had swung at him.
The crunch of his breaking nose and his squeal of pain were amongst the most satisfying things Stirland had ever heard.
So much for diplomacy, he thought, and gave the orders to return home.
CHAPTER TWO
“Why blame the fish for swimming or the well-made arrow for flying straight?”
– Strigany aphorism Domnu Brock’s caravan had arrived at noon, its ragged wagons emerging from the forest like a battered fleet from a stormy sea.
The canvas that covered the vehicles, usually well mended and snowy white, was as torn and grubby as the flags of a defeated army The brightly-coloured patterns that covered their wooden frames were battered and chipped. Even their horses, as much a part of their owners’ families as any human, were unbrushed and slow footed with exhaustion.
It had been two weeks since the Strigany had left the last town. Two weeks, during which the domnu had mercilessly driven his people and their animals onwards, threatening, pleading, cajoling. He knew that the immensity of the Reikwald was no place to linger, not even for the hundred or so people who followed him, well armed though they were.
Now, as Domnu Brock stood on the seat of his wagon, he congratulated himself on having brought the caravan through safely. He stood tall with the pride of his achievement, his leather jerkin tight across the barrel of his chest, his bare arms folded to reveal the boulders of his biceps. Although he had seen over forty summers, Brock still maintained the heavily-muscled build that had served him well in the dozen brutal professions he had followed through the Empire, before he had rejoined his people.
His face also bore testament to a life lived, if not well, then at least thoroughly. It was a battered, misshapen face. At some point it had lost an eye, the socket covered by a patch of black silk, and the square jaw, although as heavy as a prize fighter’s, was light on teeth. It should have been a brutal face, but, somehow, the lines of good humour that cut through the wrinkles of the leathered skin prevented that. So, instead of brutal, it just looked battered.
At the moment, it looked cheerful too. Brock was smiling, his one good eye squinting against the setting sun as he looked approvingly over his people’s encampment.
It was like one big animal, he thought. The wagons were its hide. The sentry points were its senses, and the market within was its hungry belly. The thought prompted the domnu to lift his gaze and peer through the smoke of the cooking fires to the wall
s of the town beyond.
It was called Lerenstein, apparently. The domnu had never been this far north, so he had never been to Lerenstein before, but during his half a century on this world he had been to a hundred towns like it. He knew that the people would be ignorant, backward even. Their craftsmen would be peasants, the jewellers no more than blacksmiths, and the tailors barely able to hold a needle.
That was good. What was even better was that their purses, although crudely made, would be plump from the year’s rich harvest.
The domnu’s good eye gleamed with pleasure, and the scar that ran through the blind socket of the other twisted to keep it company. Lerenstein offered rich pickings to those who knew how to do the picking, and Brock’s people knew how to do that all right.
Then he caught sight of his son, Mihai, and he felt the familiar mixture of pride and irritation. On the one hand, although the lad was not yet twenty, he had proved himself a true Strigany a hundred times over. His wits were as sharp as his fingers were fast, and he had earned enough to buy his own wagon, even though he had not yet reached his first score. It had taken many of the wagon masters twice as long to succeed so well.
On the other hand, Mihai didn’t seem to realise what a hard world this was. He laughed too much, and talked too much. An open mouth, Brock considered irritably, meant an empty mind. Mihai lacked respect, too. Not that he was ever rude to Brock. His father had not risen to command, first, a mercenary company in his youth, and then this entire caravan in his retirement, by allowing that sort of thing, but, Ushoran knew, the disrespect was there. Mihai could never do a thing without arguing.
He didn’t seem to realise that respect was a currency that needed to be earned, spent and invested. It was the only way he would ever become domnu in his turn.
“Mihai,” Brock called, and Mihai turned to face him. Unusually for a Strigany he had red hair, a gift from Isolde, his departed mother. It glowed in the sunlight, and so did his teeth when he smiled.
I wonder how many red-haired babes and sudden weddings we’ve left behind us, Brock thought, and there it was again, that mix of pride and irritation.
