“Right then; commend your souls to Sigmar and let’s be at it.”
FIVE
Heroes Don’t Win By Trickery
They advanced cautiously through the forecourt, weapons at the ready, Lady Magda and Pavel, still too weak from his fever to fight, at the rear. There were burned stables to the left and the remains of a dry storage to the right, shattered oil jars and empty sacks of grain lying among jumbled timbers. The main convent building faced them, a two-storey structure clad in white marble where the nuns had once taken their meals, and where the library and offices of the abbess and her staff were housed. Its walls still stood, but black smears of soot above each smashed-in window gave evidence of the destruction within. The walls were daubed with vile symbols that Reiner was glad he didn’t understand. Decaying corpses in nuns’ robes were scattered around the yard like rotting fruit fallen from some macabre tree. Oskar shivered at the sight.
They crept up wide curved steps that led to the level of the convent dormitory, where the nuns and novitiates had slept. The building was fronted by a small plaza. Neither had fared well. The dormitory, a wide, half-timbered, three-storey building, had lost its left wing to fire, and the right was sagging badly The plaza seemed to have been used as a latrine and dump by the raiders, and was filled with rotting food, broken and burnt furniture, rusting weapons and excrement. It smelled like a charnel house that had caved into a sewer.
Giano stopped them on the last step before the plaza and they crouched down. He pointed up to the next level: a mined garden, reached by another set of curving steps, and surrounded by a balustrade that looked over the plaza. Over a row of high burnt hedges, they could see pikes pointing up to the sky, with long-haired skulls spiked on top like totems. “They making the camp there,” he said. “Behind hedgings. Patrol walk around edge.”
Veirt nodded. “Right. Ostini—no—Lichtmar and Shoentag, I want you up in the dormitory. There should be windows in the third floor that overlook the garden. If not, get on the roof. You cover the boys at the fire. Ostini, you join ’em once we’ve finished off the patrols.”
“Surely it won’t take seven of us to kill two men?” said Erich.
“They are hardly men,” said Veirt. “And I hope seven of us are enough to take them out one at a time. Now here is what I want to see.”
As Veirt laid out his strategy they saw the first of the raiders pass. He was an intimidating sight, a shaggy-haired giant in leather and furs, a head taller than Ulf, and unnaturally thick with muscle. Fetishes and charms dangled from braids in his beard, and the scabbarded sword that hung from his belt looked taller than Franz—and probably outweighed him too.
After waiting for the second raider to pass they hurried to their positions—Oskar and Franz running low for the dormitory door, and the rest heading for the steps that led up to the garden. Pavel, armed with one of Reiner’s pistols, stayed behind with Lady Magda.
There was a smashed statue of Shallya directly below the balustrade that edged the garden. A blow from above had sheared it off from shoulder to hip, so that what remained was a sharp shard that pointed at the sky, while Shallya’s serene face looked up from the rubble at the base of her pedestal. Giano touched his heart with his palm when he saw it.
“Heathens,” he muttered. “Desecrate the lady. Blasphemy.”
Reiner smirked. “A mercenary who venerates Shallya?”
“Always I fight for peace,” said Giano proudly.
“Ah.”
While the others pressed against the wall on either side of the steps where they wouldn’t be seen, Reiner and Giano tip-toed up to the garden level. On its east side, it overlooked the cliff, and here the balustrade was lined with tall columns. These had once been topped with statues of Shallyan martyrs looking off toward the heathen wastelands, but the raiders had pulled them down, and the columns were empty.
Reiner eyed them uneasily. Veirt had asked him and Giano to climb the first two, and he didn’t like the idea. It wasn’t that they were hard to climb: they were wreathed with sturdy, if thorny, rose vines, which made for easy hand and foot holds. It was that they sat on the very edge of the cliff, and though Reiner wasn’t terribly afraid of heights, clinging to a column by one’s fingers and toes above a four hundred foot drop to jagged rocks would give any sane man qualms. It might have been his imagination, but the wind seemed to pick up just as he began his climb.
At last, well after Giano was already perched on his, Reiner pulled himself on top of the pillar. He swallowed. The top had looked wide enough when he was on the ground, but now seemed to have shrunk to the diameter of a dinner plate. He crouched down, knees trembling. Fortunately the briars were thick around the capital, so unless someone was actually looking for them, they were hidden from the ground. What was going to make them conspicuous was the blanket.
With a look to make sure the raider guards were out of sight, Reiner pulled his blanket from his pack, unrolled it and—holding firmly to a twist of vine—flipped one end over to Giano. The mercenary seemed to have no fear of heights. He reached out over the chasm and caught the blanket without a quiver. He gave Reiner a grin and the circled thumb and forefinger.
Reiner’s pulse beat against his throat. If the raiders spotted anything, it would be the blanket, drooping between the two pillars like festive bunting. At least the sun was at such an angle that the thing cast no shadow over the walk.
He had little time to agonise. lust as he and Giano set themselves, the first of the raiders came around the high hedge and started toward them. Reiner crouched lower in the briars and gripped the blanket with both hands. He watched as the raider walked along, gazing idly out over the cliff at the endless forest below, then reached the steps and turned to walk along the balustrade that looked over the plaza, oblivious to the men above and below him.
Now was the moment. Reiner and Giano exchanged a look, then jumped off the pillars as one, holding the blanket out wide between them. They landed perfectly, catching the raider’s head in the blanket while he was in mid-step and pulling back hard. The giant slammed flat on his back, gasping as the air was knocked from him, and before he had time to recover and cry out, the rest of Veirt’s men had raced up the steps and leapt on him: Ulf sitting on his chest and pinning his arms, Gustaf and Hals holding his legs, and Veirt grabbing his head through the blanket and cramming the butt of his pistol into the man’s mouth as he fought for air.
Erich raised his sword, but hesitated, for, though pinned, the Kurgan was so strong he jerked the three men that held him down this way and that and nearly threw them off. “Hold him still, curse you,” he hissed.
Reiner pulled the bag of pistol shot from his belt and cracked the giant over the head with all his strength. The fight went out of his massive limbs, and Erich brought his blade down like an executioner’s axe. The blow severed the raider’s head from his body. Veirt wrapped it up in the blanket and pressed it against the giant’s spouting neck. “Now get him out of here before he bleeds all over the place.”
This was easier said than done. Ulf caught the warrior under the arms, and Gustaf and Hals lifted his legs, but he seemed twice as heavy as he should be, and they could barely inch him along. Beyond that, there was no stopping the blood. Though Giano tucked a second blanket under the raider’s neck as they moved him, the flagstones of the walk were still spattered with bright red drops.
“Clean that up,” whispered Veirt, but it was too late. They could hear the second guard coming. Reiner and Giano ran to their columns again and started climbing while Veirt mopped at the bloody pavers with his cloak. Ulf, Gustaf and Hals, grunting with effort, tried to muscle the headless corpse down the steps, but Ulf lost his footing and went over backwards, tumbling down to the plaza with the body crashing on top of him as the rest ducked out of sight.
Reiner heard the second Kurgan call a question. He came around the hedge with his massive sword drawn and looked around suspiciously. He was as big as his companion, but bald, and with eyebrows so
shaggy that he had braided the ends. He wore a mail shirt and a bearskin cloak. Reiner and Giano froze halfway up their pillars and edged around out of his line of sight like squirrels. The raider crept forward, wary. Reiner held his breath.
The raider barked another question, then stopped as he spotted the smeared blood on the flagstones. He backed up, shouting a warning to his comrades over his shoulder.
Raised voices answered him from behind the hedge.
“Kill him!” cried Veirt, and raced up the steps with Erich, Hals and Gustaf behind him.
The Kurgan turned to face them, which opened his back to Giano and Reiner. They leapt at him, daggers drawn, as he met Veirt and Erich’s charge sword to sword. Reiner’s dagger turned on his mail, but Giano’s struck home and the raider roared in pain. He backhanded Giano and Reiner with his free hand while slashing at the others with his blade.
Giano was knocked to the ground, but Reiner hit the balustrade and came within an inch of tumbling over it into the void. Only a painful grab at a thorny vine stopped him. Pulling himself back to safety, Reiner heard the sound of running feet, and over it, the thrum of a bow and the crack of a gun, as Franz and Oskar fired from the dormitory windows at their suddenly moving targets.
Reiner helped Giano to his feet and they ran forward to help. The bald raider was surrounded by Veirt and the others, roaring like a cornered bull. Hals had his spear in his guts, and Veirt and Erich were laying into him like woodsmen felling a tree, but still the northman fought on. As he looked for an opening, Reiner saw Ulf, still dazed from his tumble, struggling back up the stairs, and behind him Pavel, hurrying across the plaza, pistol in hand, puffing like he’d run ten miles instead of ten yards.
The raider caught Erich a glancing blow on the shoulder and knocked him flat, then chopped through the haft of Hals’ spear and pulled the head out of his innards. He used it to block Veirt’s sword and returned the blow with a slash that sent Veirt’s helmet clattering down the steps and dropped the grizzled captain to his hands and knees.
Reiner, Giano and Ulf rushed in to fill up the gaps. Reiner parried the raider’s blade with his sabre. It was like trying to stop a battering ram with a fly whisk. His whole arm went numb with the force of the blow.
Giano too was knocked back, but not before he jabbed his sword into the crook of the giant’s arm and cut something vital. Blood soaked the northman’s leather wrist guard and his sword drooped to the ground. Ulf grabbed his other arm, shouting, “I’ve got him! Kill him!”
Reiner drove his sword deep into the raider’s chest. The man roared in pain and swung Ulf like he was a child. He crashed into Reiner and they went down in a heap.
“Hoy,” said a quiet voice.
Reiner looked up. The raider was turning to find the speaker, and came face to face with the barrel of the pistol in Pavel’s shaking hand.
Pavel fired. The back of the raider’s head exploded in an eruption of brains and gore. He dropped like a felled ox.
“Nice one,” said Hals.
Their relief was short-lived. Before Reiner and Ulf could do more than stand, four more raiders rounded the hedge at a run, axes and swords in hand. One had an arrow in his shoulder, evidence that Franz could hit more than rabbits.
Veirt stood and drew his pistol. “Fire!”
Reiner and Erich drew as well and all fired in unison. Only two of the shots hit and only one was telling, ripping a raider’s throat out. He fell to his knees, hands to his neck, guzzling his own blood. The others kept coming, and there was no time for another volley. Reiner tossed away his spent piece and mumbled a prayer to Ranald that the dice would roll his way.
Hals snatched Pavel’s spear from him and pushed his friend down the stairs, crying, “Get out of the way, y’old fool.”
Erich, Veirt, Giano and Ulf squared up to meet the charge, while Gustaf, as Reiner expected, hung back.
Just before the two sides met, a shot rang out and one of the raiders stumbled. Reiner saw Oskar and Franz running from the door of the dormitory. Oskar’s gun was smoking.
Then there was no more time for looking around. With an impact like ships colliding, the two sides came together. Erich and Ulf, the biggest of the men, took the charge full on, and held, while Veirt, canny old warrior that he was, ducked low and slashed at the shins of his man. Reiner and Giano dodged left and right and swung at the raiders’ backs as they ran by.
The three raiders took these attacks without flinching. Even wounded and outnumbered two to one, they looked to Reiner to be the winning side. They slashed at the circling men with a fearless ferocity that was frightening to behold. Reiner wondered how the Empire had ever prevailed against monsters such as these.
Ulf quickly found himself in trouble, forced away from the others by a raider with tattoos winding around his bare arms. He was overmatched, and gave ground with every exchange, the haft of his wooden maul splintering under repeated hacks from the norther’s sword. But just as he was about to break through the engineer’s defences, the Kurgan slipped on Reiner’s discarded pistol and his leg skidded out from under him. Ulf took advantage, shattering the northman’s shin with a scooping swing. The raider fell to one knee and Ulf darted in, aiming for his skull. But even unable to move, the raider was a danger. He parried the blow with his sword and gashed Ulf across the chest.
“Ulf!” cried Franz. “Fall back! Back away!”
Ulf jumped back, bleeding, and Franz and Oskar, who had been hanging fire, shot the kneeling Kurgan point blank. Franz’s arrow caught him in the throat. Oskar’s ball smashed through his groin. He collapsed sideways, clutching himself, crimson to the knees in seconds.
There were two left, and one of them, the one with Franz’s arrow in his shoulder, went down almost immediately, Veirt’s long sword slipping neatly through his ribs, but the last—the leader by his size and power—fought on, roaring like a mountain cat. Though he bled from a hundred cuts, he only seemed to get stronger—and to Reiner’s disbelieving eyes—bigger.
Reiner blinked and shook his head, ducking a wild slash from the man’s axe, but when he looked again, the illusion remained. The raider seemed to be bursting out of his armour. The leather bands around his biceps snapped as he backhanded Veirt to the ground. The links of his chain mail shirt strained and popped. A weird glyph on his powerful chest seemed to glow as if lit from within. His pupils enlarged to fill his whole eye.
“What happens to him?” asked Giano, uneasily, as the raider’s armour dropped from him like a shed skin.
“He is touched by his god,” said Veirt, recovering. “His battle rage is upon him.”
“Well, I’m a mite peeved myself,” said Hals, and jabbed the monstrous warrior in the ribs. The spearhead snapped off as if he had jammed it into a stone wall. The raider kicked the pikeman back so hard he crashed into a pillar and collapsed. Giano swung his sword at the warrior’s now naked back. It glanced off as if he wore field plate. Erich and Veirt hacked at him with similar results. Erich parried an axe blow on his sword and was knocked to the flagstones, a finger-deep notch in the edge of his blade.
This was ridiculous, thought Reiner. They outnumbered the raider ten to one and still they couldn’t finish him? There had to be something sharp enough to pierce the inhuman warrior’s skin. He frowned, thinking hard. The change had made the raider bigger and stronger, but he didn’t seem any smarter—in fact he grew more bestial by the moment. “Back toward the plaza!” Reiner shouted. “I’ve an idea!”
The men looked to Veirt.
“Do it,” he rasped. “We’re not winning this way.”
He and the others backed toward the steps, following Reiner. The raider pressed after them, slashing mindlessly.
“Hals, Ulf,” called Reiner. “Kneel at the balustrade with Hals’ spear between you.”
“But the head’s broken off,” said Hals.
“Tisn’t the point I want,” said Reiner. He scooped up a handful of loose rocks, and as Hals and Ulf knelt, holding the broken spea
r between them, he hopped up on the balustrade, looking down into the plaza to make sure he had positioned himself correctly.
“All right,” he cried. “Scatter!”
Giano and Veirt jumped back, but Erich hesitated.
“You heard him,” bellowed Veirt. “Get away!”
Erich leapt to the side, and before the transformed north-man could go after any of them, Reiner shied a rock at him. It hit him in the chest. He looked up.
“Come on, you dirt-eating heathen!” shouted Reiner. He hurled another rock. It caught the Kurgan on the bridge of the nose. He howled.
“You overgrown ox!” shouted Reiner. He bounced another rock off the warrior’s forehead. “You motherless son of a goatherd! I’ve stepped in things that smelled better than you.”
With an ear-splitting roar, the mutated marauder charged Reiner, axe swinging. At the last possible second, Reiner dived to the side and crashed to the flags. The raider hit the balustrade at thigh level and toppled forward. Hals and Ulf helped him along, raising his legs with the broken spear and flipping him over the rail to the plaza below.
There was a horrible wet crunch and an animal cry of agony cut short. Reiner stood, holding his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue when he landed and it was bleeding. He looked over the balustrade with the rest. They gasped. He smirked. His plan had worked. The Chaos marauder was impaled on the sheared-off statue of Shallya, the sharp wedge of marble jutting up through his shattered ribs like a white island rising from a red swamp.
“Sigmar’s hammer,” said Hals, rubbing his chest where the raider had kicked him. “He didn’t half deserve that.”
“Bravo,” said Giano. “But he might have missed. Why not just…?” He pointed to the cliff-edge balustrade.
“Because, unlike you,” Reiner said, rubbing his jaw, “I have some regard for my own skin. A slip here and I bite my tongue. A slip there and…” Reiner swallowed at the very thought.
“Ah, yes.”
Veirt clapped Reiner on the back. “Smart work, lad. Very smart.”
[Blackhearts 01] - Valnir's Bane Page 5
