by Warhammer
‘Beastmen?’ asked Ortwin, his voice wavering between anxious and eager.
‘Aye,’ rumbled Gotrek, his eyebrows dripping. ‘Though not nearly enough.’
Even one beastman was more than Felix cared for, but he let it go. He ran up the line to Ilgner. ‘Beastmen behind us,’ he said. ‘Gotrek thinks it’s a small party.’
Ilgner looked back, cursing, then turned to his men. ‘Into the trees to the left. We’ll let them pass.’ He looked down at Felix again. ‘Herr Jaeger, if you would be so kind as to go ahead and tell the Slayers and Kat.’
‘Aye, general,’ said Felix, and trotted forwards as the knights began leading their horses into the woods.
The Slayers didn’t like it.
‘Hide from beastmen?’ said Argrin. He looked genuinely shocked.
‘We didn’t join this squig chase to hide,’ said Rodi, indignant. ‘You want to rob us of a doom.’
‘Ilgner came to scout the big herd,’ said Felix, struggling for patience. ‘Not die before he found it. If you want a doom, stay behind and fight the whole herd after we’ve returned to Stangenschloss.’
The two Slayers grunted unhappily, but made for the trees. As Felix hurried forwards to find Kat, he heard Rodi mutter, ‘Humans,’ in a disgusted voice.
Kat looked grim when he told her.
‘Foragers,’ she said. ‘A herd on the move has outriders that range for miles in all directions, hunting for food.’
They ran back and joined the others, who had disappeared into the trees on the left side of the ragged path. Lord Ilgner had ordered the knights not just out of the open cut, but beyond the edge of the wider swathe of flattened undergrowth that the herd had trampled on either side of it. They buried themselves in the heavy brush, the knights with their cloaks and hoods drawn over their armour and helmets so that they would not betray themselves with any stray reflections. They waited with shields on their arms and cocked crossbows in their sword hands.
Felix looked back at the path as he and Kat crouched down next to Gotrek and Ortwin in the bushes. It could be seen only in little slivers between the black silhouettes of the intervening trees. The sounds of the approaching beastmen were louder now – the clump, clump, clump of hooves on earth, the bawling and braying of their inhuman speech.
‘Will they see our tracks?’ whispered Felix.
‘They might,’ said Kat, laying an arrow on the string of her bow. ‘But our prints will blend in with all of theirs, so they likely won’t notice.’
‘Let us pray they don’t,’ said Ilgner.
Rodi and Argrin snorted at that. Ortwin however seemed to be taking the general at his word, and was mumbling over his clasped hands, his head bowed.
As the sounds got louder, the horses began to shift nervously, but the knights held their bridles and murmured soothing words to them and they remained quiet.
Soon Felix saw flashes of movement between the trees, like glimpses through the cracks in a plank fence. A big beastman – a gor, Felix remembered – with a head like an antlered bear lumbered down the treeless path with a club over one shoulder, its hairy torso covered in rags and scraps of rusty armour. Four more big gors followed behind it in twos, each pair carrying a pole between them from which was hogtied the corpse of a giant boar. Behind these came a score of the smaller, more man-like beasts – those Kat had named ungors – all armed with spears, and some leading dogs – or things that might once have been dogs – on ropes.
Now it was the Slayers’ turn to get restless. Felix could hear them muttering.
‘Dibs on the big one.’
‘I called him first.’
‘Abominations.’
‘Snorri could use a good fight just now.’
‘Quiet, sirs,’ hissed Ilgner urgently. ‘Their hearing is as good as their sense of smell.’
‘We can only hope,’ said Rodi, but the dwarfs’ murmuring stopped.
Felix and the others watched in silence as the hunting party plodded along, snarling at each other and the weather and shaking the wet sleet from their fur. All Ilgner’s party had to do was wait. Another minute and the beasts would be out of sight. A minute after that they would be out of earshot.
One of the dogs raised its tusked snout, sniffing, and Felix and the others held their breath. Had it scented them? It stopped and strained towards the trees. Its ungor master jerked its leash and cursed it. The dog barked and kept looking at the woods. The knights and the Slayers white-knuckled their weapons. Kat raised her bow, though Felix doubted even she could hit a target through that thick screen of trees.
The dog barked again. The ungor snarled and kicked it, dragging it on. It growled at the abuse, then at last gave up and padded on.
Felix, Ortwin, Kat and the knights sighed with relief. The Slayers cursed.
Gotrek sneered. ‘Dogs on both ends of that leash–’
He was cut off by a crashing and a thudding at their backs. Everybody turned, peering into the depths of the forest with eyes blinded from staring towards the relative brightness of the path. Out of the shadows came two of the ungors, filthy, half-naked savages with tiny horns and pointed teeth. One had a brace of rabbits over its shoulder, the other carried a dead fox by the hind leg. They were running right for the hidden party.
‘Kill them,’ snapped Ilgner. ‘Swiftly!’
The two ungors pulled up short as they saw the knights and the Slayers standing before them in the darkness. Their eyes bulged and they opened their mouths to scream.
The one with the fox never got a chance. An arrow appeared in its throat and it toppled backwards without a sound. The other, however, lived a second longer, and spent it screaming and trying to run.
Two of Ilgner’s men fired their crossbows. The two bolts vanished into the ungor’s back and it went down thrashing and shrieking. Another shot from Kat silenced it, and everybody turned back to the path. Had the hunters heard over the wind?
There was a sound of bestial voices raised in the distance, and then the tread of heavy hooves coming nearer.
‘They heard,’ said Kat.
‘Damn and blast,’ said Ilgner.
‘Grimnir be praised!’ said Rodi and Argrin.
Ilgner started forwards, motioning for the rest to follow. ‘Back to the open path. Hurry. They’ll murder us in here. No, curse you! Leave the horses!’
The knights and the Slayers shouldered through the maze of trees towards the cleared strip, but before they had made it halfway, a handful of the ungors came back down the path, dogs straining at their leashes as they peered into the woods and called out questions. Then one of them shouted and pointed directly at Felix – or so it seemed to him – and it and its comrades charged baying into the tree line, their massive dogs bounding before them.
‘At them!’ roared Ilgner. ‘Push them out! Don’t let them trap us in here!’
The knights shouted a battle cry and ran forwards, shields up and swords back. The Slayers were just behind, axes and hammers high, roaring with joyous rage. Felix, Kat and Ortwin ran with them, screaming along with the rest.
The two sides crashed together just inside the tree line, swords and axes singing and blood flying. Felix grinned with grim pleasure as he saw that this would be no repeat of the fight around the ale wagon. The ungors were outnumbered and outfought. They weren’t attacking hired bravos and old men this time, but well-trained, well-armoured men, and berserk, battle-hardened dwarfs, and they were getting the worst of it.
Felix cut down a dog with scales for skin, then gutted an ungor with bat ears and two rows of pointed teeth. Ortwin and Kat killed another dog. All around them axes fell and swords flashed and the ungors shrieked and died. Then they were stumbling out onto the cleared path with all the rest – and straight into the thundering charge of the five big beastmen and the rest of their ungor followers. Three of the knights went down instantly under the crushing blows of spiked clubs and crude axes.
‘Dress ranks!’ shouted Ilgner. ‘Dress ranks!’
Then the Slayers shoved to the fore, howling for blood. Gotrek’s axe bit into a beastman’s club and he wrenched the weapon out of its hands. Felix and Ortwin hacked the monster down then turned to fight the ungors that tried to flank them as Gotrek challenged another gor. Snorri elbowed Ilgner aside and crashed his hammer down on the bear-headed beastman’s kneecap, shattering it. The big gor fell on its side and Ilgner and two of his knights stabbed it to death. Rodi and Argrin struck a beastman at exactly the same time and it crashed down onto its back.
‘Mine!’ cried Argrin, as he finished it off.
‘No, mine!’ roared Rodi, doing the same.
All around the melee, the ungors fell squealing as arrows whispered out of the woods and feathered their backs and sides. Good old Kat. Felix looked up as he stabbed a fallen ungor through the heart. The tide had turned. Now it was the beastmen who were surrounded and the Slayers and the knights who were on the offensive. They were winning. It would be over in seconds.
But then, from the centre of the melee, Ilgner bellowed and pointed. ‘Stop them! They’ll warn the herd!’
Felix turned. Three of the ungors were running as fast as they could down the cleared path. Already they were hard to see through the sheets of slashing sleet. Two of the knights broke away and ran after them, but in their plate armour they were too slow. The dwarfs would be no better. Ortwin was still engaged. With a resigned grunt, Felix realised it would have to be him.
He charged down the path, slipping and slewing in the mud, but before he’d taken five steps, one of the ungors dropped with an arrow in its back. Felix looked around and saw Kat at the tree line, her feet braced wide as she nocked another arrow and drew back the string. He kept running just in case.
Another of the ungors fell, an arrow sticking from its arse like a tail, but the third one showed some intelligence and swerved for the woods. An arrow followed it and took it in the leg. It stumbled but ran on, vaulting over a felled tree and disappearing into the shadows.
Felix cursed. If they lost the thing they were doomed. The herd would know they were following them. The only sane option at that point would be to turn back – and Felix knew that was an option neither Ilgner nor the Slayers would take. At least the man-beast was wounded. Felix had some chance of catching it.
He ran into the trees, glad that the herd’s passage had made the area to either side of the cleared path marginally easier to navigate. All the undergrowth had been mashed flat and pounded into the earth, but the trees were still so closely spaced that it was impossible to see more than a dozen paces ahead. The ungor was out of sight, but Felix could still hear it, thudding and thrashing ahead of him.
Then there were footsteps behind him too. He looked back. Kat was darting through the trees towards him.
‘Run!’ she said as she passed him.
‘I am… running,’ he gasped. But not like Kat, he thought. She ran like a deer, as if she had no weight at all. He surged on, struggling to keep up with her.
A second later they dodged around an ancient tree and spied the ungor ahead of them, running with a hopping limp through the pines. It was a vile-looking thing, as lean as a starving wolf, with long greasy hair that flapped behind it as it ran. It had torn Kat’s arrow out, and blood ran down its bare leg and soaked into its filthy buskins.
Kat drew an arrow and tried to fit it to her bow while she ran. The ungor looked back and shrieked, its black horse-eyes wide with fear, then dived into the thick brush at the edge of the trampled area, thrashing and kicking to get through.
Kat cursed and ran to the place it had entered, plunging in without slowing. Felix was right behind her. They shouldered together through brambles and bushes as the forest got darker around them. Felix could hear movement from in front of him, and could see the shaking of branches, but he had lost sight of their quarry.
After a moment they pushed out into a slightly more open area and Kat stopped, looking and listening. Felix could hear nothing over his own breathing and the rattle of the sleet on the overhanging needles, but apparently Kat had keener ears.
‘This way,’ she said, and started to the left.
They ran on, leaping gnarled roots and ducking overhanging branches as they raced up a slick, wooded hill. Felix had no sense of where the ungor was now.
They broke onto a narrow game trail and Kat followed it further up the hill, putting on more speed. At the crest of the hill, the ungor flashed through a shaft of grey light then disappeared beyond the ridge. It was lurching with every step.
‘Ha,’ said Kat. ‘It’s slowing.’
‘Good,’ said Felix. He felt like his throat was made of hot sand. ‘So am I.’
They pounded after it, Felix slipping as they reached the top of the rise. Finally, as they came around a bend, it was before them, weaving wearily as it staggered down the path. Felix and Kat charged it. It screeched and dived into the thick brush again, like a rabbit into a hedgerow.
‘After it,’ shouted Kat.
They plunged in, fighting through the heavy growth as it struggled ahead of them. Then, with a surprised cry, it dropped out of sight, and they heard a heavy thud.
‘It’s fallen!’ said Felix, and pressed forwards eagerly.
‘Felix, wait!’ barked Kat.
Felix burst through a screen of bushes and stumbled forwards into the clear, then back-pedalled desperately. There was a ravine directly in front of him, dropping down a rocky cliff to a tree-hemmed stream below. His foot slipped at the muddy edge. He fought for balance. Pebbles pattered away under his boot.
Then, just as he knew he was going to fall, Kat clutched his flailing hand and hauled him back. He toppled against her then fell to his knees.
Without a word, Kat stepped past him to the edge of the slope, readying an arrow.
‘Thank you, Kat,’ said Felix as he got to his feet and joined her. ‘Is it dead?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, peering down into the ravine intently. ‘I hope… No, Taal curse it, there it goes.’
Felix looked down where she pointed and saw the ungor just limping under the screen of trees, splashing down the centre of the ice-rimmed stream.
Felix eyed the sheer face of the sleet-slicked cliff uneasily. With some rope they might have descended, but with just hands and feet it would be treacherous. ‘I don’t know if we can–’
‘But we must!’ said Kat, angrily. ‘If I fail in this we are dead!’ She cursed with frustration and began trotting along the edge of the cliff in the direction the man-beast had gone, looking at the thick covering of trees that hid the bottom of the chasm.
‘You set yourself a high mark,’ said Felix, following her. ‘You killed two of the three that ran, and wounded this one–’
‘It won’t be enough!’ she said. Then suddenly she skidded to a stop, staring out into the ravine. ‘Ha!’
Felix followed her gaze, trying to see what she saw through the gusts of sleet. At first he couldn’t make out anything that would draw her attention, but then he saw that there was a break in the trees through which he could see the glint of the swift-flowing stream.
Felix shook his head. The gap was a good fifty yards from where they were, and at this distance he could have hidden it by holding out his arm and covering it with his palm. The ungor would walk past it in three strides. Could Kat even loose an arrow before it passed? It seemed impossible, even without the wind and the sleet.
Nevertheless, she raised her bow and drew the arrow back to her ear, then stood as still as a statue while she waited.
Felix looked from her to the gap and back, not daring to speak for fear of ruining her concentration. How long could she hold the tension of the bow? How long could
she keep her aim steady?
He scanned the trees before the gap, looking for some sign of the man-beast’s passage, but the cover was too thick. He could see nothing until the break. He watched it like a cat watches a hole, trying not to blink.
Suddenly Kat loosed the arrow, and Felix gasped, thinking she had fired at nothing, but then, as he watched, astonished, the beast sloshed into the gap – and into the path of the arrow. The shaft caught it in the neck, betwixt shoulder and ear, and it splashed face first into the stream and lay there unmoving, its head and torso half under the water.
Kat let out a yelp of triumph and leapt into the air. ‘Yes!’ she said, then turned to the still-stunned Felix and hugged him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
Felix snapped out of his staring and burst out in astonished laughter as he hugged her back, lifting her off the ground. ‘Well shot, Kat! Sigmar’s hammer, what a shot! Never in my…’
His words trailed off as he realised that he was eye to eye with her, and that she was looking at him with the same strange intensity that she had when they had hugged before.
‘Kat?’ he said.
Suddenly she pushed her mouth to his and kissed him full on the lips, her tongue thrusting forwards to find his. For a moment he responded in kind, too shocked and too aroused to think what he was doing, and they grappled and crushed together like wrestlers.
But then his mind caught up with his body, and he pulled back from her, loosening his grip.
‘Kat,’ he said again. ‘Listen. I… I don’t think…’
She looked at him, blushing suddenly, and pushed out of his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, turning to hide her face. ‘I… I didn’t mean to do that. I just…’
She hurried to collect her bow, which she had dropped on the ground.
Felix stepped towards her. ‘There’s no need to apologise,’ he said. ‘You just… er, that is, I hadn’t expected…’
‘Forget it,’ said Kat, not looking at him. ‘Just forget it. I’m a fool.’
‘You’re not a fool,’ said Felix, turning her around. ‘I won’t pretend I haven’t felt the same… urges, but…’ He paused, wondering if he should tell her all the things that had been roiling in his head since that first brief spark of awareness. Could he even articulate it? Better perhaps to keep it simple. ‘I’ve known you since you were seven, Kat. It just feels… wrong.’