by Warhammer
‘It seems our traitor is wilier than I thought,’ he said. ‘Either he has used his dark powers to protect himself from the great hammer’s purity, or he has hidden himself where we cannot find him. So it seems I must appeal, again in Graf Reiklander’s name, to your love of your Empire and your fellows.’
He straightened and looked around, his eyes flashing from man to man. ‘One of you must step forwards and save us all, for one of you knows who the traitor is!’
This raised a confused muttering, and Felix could hear some angry whispers as well.
‘I do not mean that you are also a traitor,’ said von Geldrecht against the ugly drone. ‘I do not mean anyone is intentionally hiding this villain from the rest of us. I mean that one of you, perhaps more than one, has seen a comrade do something, something strange or out of character, something that made you frown for a moment, but which you then dismissed as nothing. You told yourself you must not have seen correctly. It must have been some harmless gesture or innocent eccentricity. Well, it was not!’ Von Geldrecht brought his voice to a cracking roar. ‘It was witchcraft! And though you knew it not, you saw it! What was it? Who was it? I want each one of you to think back and remember. Where were you? Who were you with? What did they do? Was it a strange twist of the hand? A whisper in a foreign tongue? Did they lurk in certain places for too long with no reason?’
The whispering grew louder. The men started glaring around at each other while their sergeants barked for order. Von Volgen stared at the steward like he wanted to kick him down the stairs.
‘Fat fool,’ muttered Gotrek.
‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘They’ll be burning each other at the stake before he’s done.’
‘And when you remember,’ continued von Geldrecht, ‘when those seemingly innocent actions are revealed in your mind for what they truly were, come to me. Not to anyone else! Not to your captain, not to your comrades. Only me. I will do what must be done.’ Von Geldrecht spread his arms and bowed his head. ‘Now, I thank you for your patience. You are dismissed. Return to your duties.’
But as the steward, the priest, von Volgen and Classen turned to talk amongst themselves, the crowd did not disperse. Instead they clumped together in little knots and began to argue amongst themselves, with many a wary glance over their shoulders at everyone else.
Felix groaned to see it.
Kat shook her head. ‘How are they going to fight together when none of them trust each other?’
‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘He’s–’
But he cut off as he saw the household knights falling in around Tauber and his assistants and motioning them back towards the keep along with Draeger and his men. What was this? He started forwards, but Sister Willentrude beat him to it.
‘My lord,’ she shouted, pushing towards von Geldrecht, ‘are you going to lock Surgeon Tauber up again now that he has passed your test? Surely if he has touched the Hammer of Judgement of Frederick the Bold and not burst into flames, that is proof that he is innocent, and if he is innocent, you must free him so that he can care for the wounded.’
Von Geldrecht turned on her again, looking as sick as a mutant confronted by witch hunters, but then he composed himself as the whole crowd quieted to listen.
‘The test was inconclusive,’ he said, lifting his bearded chins. ‘Since it proved no one’s guilt, it did not prove Tauber’s innocence. I cannot allow him to go free.’
There were murmurs at this. One of the wounded shouted, ‘Free him!’
Another shouted, ‘Put Bosendorfer in his place! Let him rot!’
‘Then will you lock the rest of us up?’ shouted Felix, stepping forwards to stand with the sister. ‘As it didn’t prove our innocence either?’
Von Geldrecht’s eyes flared. ‘Herr Jaeger, if you speak another word, I will certainly have you locked up! Now, disperse, all of you. Tauber remains our prisoner. That is an end to it!’
He turned away, limping angrily towards the keep as the men of the castle watched after him, muttering and whispering dangerously.
‘I’m beginning to think we should do it Gotrek’s way, and kill everybody,’ said Kat, then turned to follow the Slayers, who were crossing the yard to tell Carpenter Bierlitz about the weakened hoardings.
Felix nodded, distracted, but continued to stare after von Geldrecht. There was most definitely something between the steward and Tauber. That was the only way to explain his actions. He had been deathly afraid Tauber would burst into flames, and relieved when he didn’t. Yet he would not release him. Why?
Perhaps later Felix could get von Geldrecht alone and get an answer out of him, but not just now. He didn’t seem in the mood for talking at the moment. Felix sighed and made to follow Kat, but instead found himself chest to chest with Captain Bosendorfer, who was staring at him with pure hatred blazing from his ice-blue eyes.
FOURTEEN
Felix stepped back, his hand dropping to his hilt. ‘You wish to speak to me, captain?’
‘I wish to have your head, mein Herr,’ Bosendorfer snarled. ‘You have been a disrupting presence since you entered these walls, countermanding my orders to my men, and now accusing me of dishonourable conduct, and I demand satisfaction.’
Felix sighed. Did this have to start now? He was so tired. Too tired to argue. Too tired to fight. He just wanted to walk past the captain and go to sleep.
Bosendorfer’s eyes widened. ‘Do you sneer at me, Herr Jaeger? Was that a laugh?’
Felix rolled his eyes. ‘That was a sigh, captain. A weary sigh. I have been awake a full day now, and have done a little fighting along the way. So–’
‘And you suggest that I haven’t? That I have less reason to be weary than do you?’
‘Of course not, captain,’ said Felix. ‘We have all fought hard. I just want to go to sleep, that’s all.’
‘Not before you apologise for your actions,’ he said. ‘Not before you admit your accusations of dishonourable conduct are false.’
Out of the corners of his eyes Felix saw Kat and the Slayers turning back to see what the matter was on one side, and Bosendorfer’s great-swords moving in on the other. All over the yard, people were turning their heads.
‘I never accused you of dishonourable conduct, captain,’ said Felix, rubbing his forehead. ‘I may have warned you against it just now, but I am willing to believe you never intended it. And, on the wall?’ he shrugged. ‘I apologise for calling orders to your men, but there seemed no other way to get them back after they had fled–’
Bosendorfer slapped Felix across the cheek. It nearly knocked him to the ground. Kat cried out and ran forwards, drawing her skinning knife, with the Slayers striding in after her. Felix caught her arm as she made to put the blade to Bosendorfer’s throat.
‘No, Kat!’ he shouted. The sting of the slap was making him tear up. ‘Slayers, stay back!’
‘You lie, mein Herr!’ cried Bosendorfer. ‘We did not flee! Not for an instant!’
Felix held Kat back as the three dwarfs ranged around to his left, ready to join in at his word. The greatswords were on guard on his right, but one, the grizzled sergeant who had fought beside Felix against the ghouls from the siege tower, was stepping to Bosendorfer and putting a hand on his shoulder.
‘Captain, please,’ he said. ‘What’s to fight about? We broke, and we came back. No one will say–’
‘I did not break, Leffler!’ shouted Bosendorfer, knocking the sergeant’s hand aside and turning on him. ‘I retreated in good order for your safety, and we would have taken up a new position had not Herr Jaeger, against all standards of military conduct, countermanded my orders and usurped my authority!’
The sergeant looked uncomfortable. ‘That’s as may be, captain. But we don’t need to be fighting each other over things that happened in the heat of battle. Not when there’s ten thousand dead bastards out there and we need every man in here. Herr Jaeger–’
‘Are you defending him, Leffler?’ cried Bosendorfer. ‘Against your own captain?’
‘No, captain, no,’ said Leffler, holding up his hands. ‘I’m only saying, if you want to challenge him, why not wait until we’re clear of this? Until we can do it proper. Until you’re all rested and ready.’
Bosendorfer looked at the sergeant for a moment, his eyes level and cold, then dropped his gaze to himself. He looked as battered at Felix felt – his armour dented, crusted rimes of blood on his arms, neck and chin, and a bandage around one hand that was stiff and black.
‘Very well,’ he sighed at last. ‘Very well, when we are clear.’ He turned on Felix again, eyes blazing as fiercely as before. ‘But I will have satisfaction, and if you insult me again, or come between me and my men, I will not wait. We will resolve it between us then and there!’
Felix inclined his head. ‘Very good, captain.’
Bosendorfer snorted and stalked away, head high.
Sergeant Leffler started after him, then looked back to Felix with an apologetic shrug. ‘He’s a good lad, mein Herr,’ he murmured. ‘But younger than his brother was.’
Felix nodded wearily, then let Kat out from the prison of his arms.
‘You should have let me kill him,’ she said, curling her lip. ‘And done us all a favour.’
‘Aye,’ said Rodi. ‘That one will never be old enough to be a captain.’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘No one here will get much older.’ He nodded to Felix. ‘Get some sleep, manling. When you wake, we’ll see about the moat.’
Felix nodded again, and it almost carried him over. He caught himself against Kat, and they staggered towards the residences.
‘Let’s hope,’ said Kat, ‘our room isn’t one that burned.’
When Felix woke again, the day had already tipped past noon, and Kat was not beside him. He lifted his head up, afraid she had answered some call to action that he had slept through, but all that came through the room’s shattered window was the normal hammering and thudding of repairs, and he sagged back, groaning. His muscles were so stiff it felt as if he had been dried on a rack like hard-tack, his head throbbed like he had a hangover and his mouth tasted like he had eaten a muddy shoe. He desperately needed a drink of water, but felt too tired to get out of bed. This was the time when one needed a servant. A servant would bring one water at the pull of a rope.
He looked up over the bed. There was no pull rope. There was hardly a ceiling. Though the room had not, as Kat feared, burned, one of Kemmler’s trebuchets had dropped a boulder through it sometime during the battle last night. The boulder had missed the bed by inches, and now lay where the chair had been. Ah, well. He would just have to get the water on his own, then.
He levered himself up out of the bed, hissing and barking with pain, then pulled on his padded jack and chain shirt and strapped on Karaghul. The sky, when he stepped out into the courtyard, was low and grey, and the air wet and cold. He looked around for Kat and spotted her at last up on the parapet, leaning against the battlements and looking out over the walls near where Bierlitz and his men were replacing the hoarding posts that the saboteur had weakened with his sorcery. The Slayers were down at the far eastern corner of the walls, looking down towards the closed dike and talking amongst themselves.
Felix stepped into the underkeep and waited in line for his swallow of water and his single biscuit, then came back out to the courtyard and crossed the stairs to the wall. Around him teams of men were continuing the seemingly endless task of piling decapitated bodies on the eternal pyres, while others fished bloated corpses out of the harbour with boat hooks. The river wardens were all by the river gate in their remaining oarboats, adding to the makeshift patch that Gotrek and the Slayers had made last night and making it more permanent, while everywhere the men sharpened their weapons and repaired their kit in preparation for the battle that was sure to come with the sunset.
Despite all this activity, the mood of the castle could not have been more poisonous. The aftermath of von Geldrecht’s speech was just what Felix had feared. The men of the various companies all whispered amongst themselves and shot suspicious looks at all the other companies, looking for signs of sorcerous behaviour. Some were muttering about freeing Tauber and bringing him back to the surgery. Some were muttering about breaking into his cell and murdering him.
Father Ulfram and Danniken shuffled from group to group, apparently trying to ease the tension, but it didn’t seem to be working. Whoever they talked to just pointed fingers at one of the other groups or told them to go preach at von Geldrecht and Bosendorfer.
When he reached the top of the stairs, Felix crossed to where Kat was staring out over the misty fields and the sea of zombies, her chin in her hands. Felix leaned beside her and followed her gaze. Off by the tree line, new bone-and-skin siege towers were being erected, three this time, as ugly as the others, and more ballistae and trebuchets were growing as well. He groaned as he saw them.
‘We’ll have it to do all over again, eh?’ he said.
Kat didn’t answer.
‘At least this time we can be fairly sure they won’t get into the harbour.’
She still didn’t answer.
Felix looked at her. ‘Something wrong?’
Her jaw bunched and her brow lowered. ‘I hate them,’ she said.
‘The zombies?’
‘Not the zombies.’ She glared over her shoulder at the yard. ‘Them. The men. The knights and spearmen and gunners. All of them.’
Felix frowned. He was feeling less than charitable towards them himself, just then, but he didn’t know why she should be. ‘If this is about Bosendorfer, forget him. I’ve already put him out of my mind. He hasn’t been giving you trouble, has he?’
Kat blew out a breath. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with him. It’s all the whispering, and the backbiting and the… I don’t belong here, Felix.’ She pointed out to the dark band of the forest. ‘I belong there, in the wood, doing what I’m good at. I just don’t understand these… these… Why do we help them when they’re so awful?’
She turned to face him, her eyes glistening. ‘I have sworn to rid the Drakwald of beastmen and protect the Empire, but when I come into the towns, or to a castle, people are just... vile! They cheat each other, they fight each other, shout at each other. They might join together when things are at their worst, but as soon as the trouble is over, they’re back to blaming each other for what went wrong and trying to take more than their share!’
Felix shrugged, feeling helpless. ‘That’s just human nature, Kat. We’ve always been a–’
‘Then I don’t want to be human!’
Felix looked around to see if anyone had heard her outburst. That was not the sort of thing one said in a land of witch hunters and mutants. He turned her around to face him, meaning to speak, but she clung to him suddenly, hanging her head.
‘I’m sorry, Felix,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean it. Not really. I just – sometimes I wish I could go into the forest and never come out again.’
Felix sighed and stroked her hair. ‘I know how you feel,’ he said. ‘There are times when I wish Gotrek and I had never come back to the Empire. But there are other times,’ he kissed the top of her head, ‘when I wish I had come home sooner.’
‘I wish you had too.’ Kat smiled up at him. ‘I will be better when we get free of this place – if we get free. I’m always better when I am moving.’
Felix wondered if that was the case with him too. It had been so long since he had stayed in one place for any length of time that he had no idea how he would fare settled down.
A curse from down the wall drew their attention to the Slayers, and they broke from their embrace.
Gotrek was still leaning out over the battlements and chewing his thumb with a distracted air, while Snorri appeared to be trying to spit on as many zombies as he could, but Rodi was pounding the battlements with his fist.
‘And why not?’ he bellowed. ‘It would be a glorious doom.’
Felix and Kat started down the wal
l towards them and heard Gotrek reply without looking around.
‘You can go over the side anytime you want, Rodi Balkisson, but I’m not wasting so much blackpowder on a glorious failure.’
‘It won’t fail!’ said Rodi. ‘You think I can’t cut my way through a pack of corpses with a few kegs of blackpowder on my back? Do you think I’m some weak human?’
‘Look at it, Balkisson,’ said Gotrek, pointing down at the dike with a stubby finger. ‘Blowing yourself up in front of it would hardly splinter the wood.’
Felix and Kat leaned through the gap in the hoardings and looked where Gotrek was pointing. The dike was set into heavy stone ramparts built at an angle to the riverbank, so that when its doors were open, the water would rush easily into the moat like it was a branch of the river. When the doors were closed, however, as now, the water smashed into them in a constant foaming crest, angry at being denied its natural path. They therefore needed to be strong – and they were. Each of the foot-thick oak and iron titans looked to Felix to be about twenty feet high, and they were held closed against the pounding water by two great oak beams that slotted out across them from the stone banks, one near the top, and one near the bottom.
‘At least four charges must be set,’ said Gotrek. ‘Two behind each beam, and fuses laid to blow them all as one.’
‘What of it?’ said Rodi. ‘I can do all that.’
Gotrek snorted, then nodded towards the scores of zombies that milled around on the stone banks of the dike. ‘And can you also keep the corpses from ripping out one fuse while you set the next? Or knocking the charges loose?’
Rodi opened his mouth, still defiant, but had no answer.
‘There are some things even a Slayer cannot do alone,’ said Gotrek, then looked back down at the dike. ‘We wait for tonight’s attack, when the necromancer’s attention is on the walls. Then we will go.’
Rodi turned away, disgusted, but Snorri wiped the spit from his beard and looked up.