The guard blinked at the templar as if he’d sprouted from the ground, then bowed reflexively. “Sorry, m’lord,” he said. “Next ferry won’t come for an hour.”
Teobalt pointed down to the bank of the river, where a long boat with eight oars was pulled up on the mud. “Then I will take that,” he said.
The guard looked down at the boat, then hesitated. “Er, I’ll ask my captain.”
“At once, please,” said Teobalt.
Felix smiled as the guard scurried off. He didn’t have much use for the noble classes as a rule, but they were handy to have around when one wanted to get things done in a hurry.
“Damned shame, isn’t it?” said a halfling pushing a pie cart, nodding at the bridge. “But it was the only way. Mined the pilings and blew it to pieces, they did. Fancy hot pie?”
“Snorri doesn’t want a pie,” said Snorri. “Snorri wants a beer. He hasn’t had a drink in a week.”
“Ah, you’ll be wanting to speak to my darling wife then,” said the pie-seller. “Hoy, Esme! These gentlemen would like a drink!”
A halfling woman further down the line waved to him and turned a wheelbarrow around, in the bed of which as an enormous barrel of ale. Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri licked their lips.
“And we was lucky,” said the halfling, leaning against his cart as he waited for his wife. “For if the beasts had truly wanted the town, blowing up the bridge wouldn’t have stopped them.”
“Why not?” asked Gotrek.
The halfling snorted. “Well, they crossed the Talabec, didn’t they? Just jumped in and swam.”
Felix turned and looked at the wide, rushing river, more than a half-mile across here where the Zufuhr joined it. “They swam the Talabec?” he said, unbelieving.
“Aye,” said the halfling. “Or most of them did at any rate. Went across in a big clump, all clinging to each other, like. A lot of them still drowned. Hundreds, I hear. Swept away. Still, enough made it ashore to wipe Brasthof off the map. Trod it flat and kept on south like they was following a star.” He shivered. “They say Brasthof’s not there no more. Just… gone.”
Felix grimaced at the thought, but before he could ask the halfling any more questions, the guard returned with his captain, a round-faced, round-bodied fellow with a pointed beard and a nervous smile.
“Ah, m’lord,” he said, bowing to Sir Teobalt. “Nesselbaum says you want to borrow our boat.”
“I wish to report to your mayor and your lord something of grave import concerning the beastman herd.”
“Thank you, m’lord,” said the captain. “But a messenger was sent to Baron von Kotzebue yesterday, informing him of their passage.”
“It is not of their passage that I wish to inform him,” said Sir Teobalt, going a bit red in the face. “He must hear of the threat the monsters pose, and of the danger involved in facing them. Is the baron on his way?”
“Er, no, m’lord,” said the captain. “The mayor sent another messenger after the first telling him it wasn’t necessary.”
“What?” The templar’s eyes blazed. “For what reason, in Sigmar’s name?”
“Well, m’lord,” said the captain, shrinking back uneasily. “They swam the river into Talabecland late last night. So they were no longer a threat to us.”
Felix stared, alarmed, as the veins bulged in Sir Teobalt’s forehead and neck. He was afraid the old templar’s heart was going to explode with fury.
“No longer a threat!” bellowed Sir Teobalt. “Listen to me, you small-minded provincial buffoon. Has the late war taught you nothing? The Empire is strong only when it stands together! Had Middenland helped Ostland from the first, the invaders would have been stopped before they began!” He tugged off his riding gloves angrily, and Felix was afraid he was going to slap the fat captain with them, but after a moment he collected himself and took a deep breath.
“The leader of the beasts,” he said, speaking as one would speak to a small child, “means to unleash a magic upon the Empire that will turn half of its citizens into beastmen and set them raging upon their neighbours. The spell will not stop at provincial borders. It will not respect the boundaries of any lord’s land. It will touch anyone living under the shadow of the Empire’s forests, be they in Talabecland, Reikland, Hochland, Middenland or anywhere else. Do you understand me?”
The captain’s mouth opened and closed several times, but nothing came out.
“Now,” said the templar, “you shall give this message to your mayor and tell him that he will send a third rider after the first two, and respectfully request Baron von Kotzebue come to the aid of his Talabecland neighbours before he and all his vassals start sprouting horns and hooves.”
“Ah… aye, m’lord,” said the captain, bowing convulsively. “Right away, m’lord. But…” he hesitated, afraid to provoke the old knight’s wrath any further.
“But?” said Teobalt, dangerously.
“But a military force must have permission from the ruling lord before entering his lands, m’lord. Baron von Kotzebue commands four thousand men. Talabecland would see it as an invasion. An invitation would have to be sent and the baron surely wouldn’t move his army before he had it.”
Sir Teobalt fought to control his temper. “Then your messenger shall tell the baron that you have such an invitation already.”
“You ask us to lie to the baron?” said the captain, white as a sheet.
“It will not be a lie,” said the old knight. “For you will this moment transport me and my companions across the river to Talabecland, so that I may speak to the lord there and procure the invitation you require.”
The captain hesitated, practically vibrating with fear at being the instrument that would carry a falsehood to his liege, but finally he bowed to Sir Teobalt. “Very good, m’lord,” he said. “I will find the oarsmen and have the boat prepared for you momentarily” And with that he scurried off towards the riverbank, shouting for his subordinates.
Sir Teobalt let out a long sigh and sagged against the wagon, exhausted from his anger.
Rodi chuckled. “That was telling him,” he said.
“Aye,” said Gotrek.
Felix put a hand on the knight’s shoulder. “Are you all right, sir?”
“I am fine, thank you, Herr Jaeger,” said Teobalt. “I only hope I did some good. The message may yet fall foul of fools.”
Felix nodded and looked around. The halfling and his wife — who had come up during Teobalt’s tirade — were staring open-mouthed at them all.
“Pardon, your worships,” said the pie-seller. “Was all that true that you said just now? About everybody turning into beasts and killing each other?”
Felix hesitated and looked at the others. He could see the same thought in all their eyes. If this news were to spread there would be a terrible panic, and the halfling couple were just the ones to spread it, taking food, drink and gossip up and down the line of wagons, which would then travel to the ends of the Empire. It was a recipe for riot and rampage.
Gotrek fixed Felix with his single eye and gave him an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
“Nah. Not a word of it,” said Felix. “Just something to get old Kotzebue moving a little faster.” He leaned in with what he hoped was a conspiratorial smile. “Though don’t tell the captain that. It’ll spoil everything.”
The halfling and his wife grinned with relief.
“Not a word, squire,” said the little man. “I know when to keep mum.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Felix, and then just to seal the deal, “A pie and a pint all around while we wait for our boat.”
“It would be our pleasure, sir,” said the halfling.
The mayor of Esselfurt, the village almost directly across the Talabec from Ahlenhof, listened patiently as Sir Teobalt explained it all again. He was a big man, with a barrel chest, a booming voice and a chain of office around his neck that probably weighed more than Karaghul.
Felix almost dozed off in the middle of it. Es
selfurt’s council hall was warmed by a roaring fire, and he was basking in it. The crossing of the Talabec in a small boat had not been a pleasant experience. The battering wind had cuffed water off the waves and sprayed it in their faces. Felix, Kat and Sir Teobalt had hunched under their cloaks in the back of the boat, cold, wet and miserable, while Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi spent their time leaning over the side, giving their recently consumed pie and beer to the waves.
Now all was warmth and peace and the smell of wet wool drying by the fire — that is until Teobalt finished his tale and the mayor pounded the table he stood behind with a meaty fist, snapping Felix out of his nap. “By Sigmar, Sir Teobalt,” he said. “That’s bad. A bad business. And Esselfurt stands behind you in your effort to defeat this terrible threat to our beloved Empire.”
“I thank you, Mayor Dindorf,” said the templar, relieved. “Then you will send to your lord, and ask him to bring troops to face the herd before Hexensnacht?”
“Word was sent last night when the beasts crossed the Talabec, m’lord,” said Mayor Dindorf. “And I will send messengers with this new information. But, er…”
“Is there a difficulty?” asked Sir Teobalt dangerously, as Dindorf faltered.
“Well, you see,” said the mayor, “I’m not sure who will come. Or how soon.”
“I don’t understand,” said the templar, his face clouding. “Who would come but your lord?”
The mayor scratched the back of his head. “Well, it’s like this, m’lord. Count Feuerbach, the Elector of Talabecland is our liege here, but he hasn’t returned from the fighting in the north. It is rumoured he might be dead. Most of the lords who would answer in his place are away in Talabheim, petitioning Countess Krieglitz-Untern to be his successor.”
“So you have sent to them there?” Sir Teobalt’s shoulders sagged. “Talabheim is days away. They will never return in time.”
“Word has also been sent to their castles, my lord,” said the mayor. “But, well, there is no one at them but their sons and wives. I don’t know who of them will answer.”
The templar sighed. “Is there no one who can raise an army quickly?” he asked. “We face the end of all things.”
“There is the Temple of Leopold in Priestlicheim,” said Mayor Dindorf, “which trains warrior-priests. And the Monastery of the Tower of Vigilance further south. They’re said to be a martial order, but they don’t come out of the cloister much.”
Sir Teobalt nodded, though Felix could see that he was downhearted. “Then I beg you, mayor, to send to them as well, and muster what militia you can from your people. Tell them to come to Brasthof. We will follow the herd’s trail from there.”
“Aye, my lord,” said the mayor. “I will do what I can.”
Felix wondered unhappily how much that might be.
Sir Teobalt was torn between depression and fury as they made their way west along the south bank of the Talabec towards Brasthof in the driving rain, and it pained Felix to see it.
“Sigmar, I am sickened,” said the old knight, his eyes dull as he rode along on the horse that he had commandeered from Mayor Dindorf. He’d had to leave Machtig behind in Ahlenhof — the warhorse had been too big for the boat. “These puffed-up popinjays fight over the holdings of Count Feuerbach like so many thieves, while the Empire is being lost behind their backs,” he sighed. “Perhaps we deserve our fate. Though we have pushed back the hordes from the north there is still much wickedness abroad in the land. Perhaps it is right to wipe the slate clean and start again.”
Felix was more inclined to put it down to bad luck and human nature, but he didn’t want to further upset the old templar with argument, so he said nothing.
As the pie-seller had said, there were huge shoals of dead beastmen floating in the river and washed up on the muddy banks all along the road to the village — Felix couldn’t even have begun to count how many, but it was hundreds, not dozens — all bloated and grey from being long in the water, and stinking to the gushing clouds.
In Brasthof, however, there were no bodies. The town was Stangenschloss and Leer and the timber camp all over again — shattered and empty except for a few looters, with the same unnerving lack of corpses they had seen before — proof that there had been no slaughter, just the terrible magic of the stone, replacing those who had drowned with the changed.
It had been a small town — bigger than Bauholz, smaller than Leer — but like Leer it had been sorely damaged by the herd’s passage. It looked as if the beastmen, frustrated because the stone’s transformative power left them with no enemies to fight, had taken out their rage on the buildings instead. Little flattened cottages lay with their thatched roofs on top of them like scratchy blankets, stables and smithies torn apart, shops set on fire. Gaping holes had been smashed in the front of the one tavern. The few survivors sat among the ruins, weeping and calling out to loved ones who were no longer there, and likely no longer human.
The temple of Sigmar seemed to have seen special attention from the beasts. It had been daubed with faeces and all its symbols torn down and smashed. In front of it, Felix saw a corpse in the robes of a priest. Up close they could see that the man had died halfway through changing into a beastman. It looked as if he had stabbed himself in the neck to stop the transformation.
As they made their way around the piles of rubble, Gotrek stopped and held up a hand. Felix and the others paused, listening. From behind the temple came the clank and rattle of armour and heavy steps. Felix and Sir Teobalt drew their swords. Kat pulled her bow from her back. The slayers readied their weapons.
Then, around the corner crept four halberdiers in breastplates, morions and mustard-coloured uniforms slashed with burgundy. They stopped when they saw Teobalt’s party and went on guard.
“Who are you?” asked the one in front. “Scavengers?”
Sir Teobalt nudged his horse forwards a step. “I am Sir Teobalt von Dreschler, templar of the Order of the Fiery Heart. I and my companions seek the doom of the beastmen.”
The men relaxed when they heard Teobalt speak, and the first one bowed. “Soldiers of Lord Giselbert von Volgen, m’lord. You have knowledge of these beasts?”
“We have been following them for weeks,” said Teobalt.
“Then you had better come speak to our master.”
The soldiers led them out the other side of the village to a windmill around which about a hundred mustard-uniformed soldiers stood at ease while a hard-faced, beardless young lord in a suit of fluted plate armour sat upon a barded warhorse and spoke to a huddled collection of villagers who stood beside him. The lord had a handful of other knights with him, and they hemmed in the villagers on all sides. A tall, powerfully built captain of halberdiers held the reins of the lord’s horse.
Felix was heartened to see so many uniformed men. It wasn’t an army, but after the excuses and disappointments at Ahlenhof and Esselfurt, to find a band of fighting men of any size on the trail of the beastmen was a welcome surprise.
“Damn it, Thiessen,” the square-jawed young lord was saying as Felix and the others approached. “Make them stop blubbing and talk sense. I don’t understand a word they’re saying.”
“Aye, lord,” said the big captain, then turned to the villagers. “Come now,” he said kindly. “We won’t get it straight if you keep weeping. Take a breath and tell it again.”
“They changed, I tell you!” wailed a woman dressed only in a muddied shift. “Before my eyes they changed. My husband, my son, my… my beautiful little Minna. Horns and hooves and teeth! They… they turned on me. My Minna bit me!” She burst out in fresh tears.
“It is true, my lord,” said an older man in torn clothes that had once been of fashionable cut. “The whole town became beasts. Blue lightning flashed and they changed, then attacked all they had loved.”
The young lord stared down at the man, a flat look on his cold face. He turned to his knights, obviously annoyed. “It must be nonsense,” he said. “They are lying. It’s not possible
.”
“It is possible, my lord,” said Sir Teobalt, as the soldiers led them close. “And they do not lie. I have seen the evidence of it with my own eyes.”
The young lord looked up at him with angry eyes as his knights turned their heads to stare. “Who interrupts?”
Seeing him full-on at last, Felix guessed he might be twenty-two, and with the look of a young man with something to prove.
The soldier who had brought Teobalt and the rest saluted. “My lord, this is Sir Teobalt von Dreschler, a templar, and his companions. They have been on the trail of the beasts for weeks.” He turned to Teobalt and bowed. “My master, sir. Lord Giselbert von Volgen, heir to these lands.”
Von Volgen’s face relaxed somewhat when he heard Sir Teobalt’s title, and he inclined his head respectfully. “Well met, templar,” he said. “So this madness they speak of is true?”
“It is, my lord,” said Sir Teobalt. “And there is worse.”
And so the old knight began to tell it all again, to fresh horror and shock, but before he had got very far, more of von Volgen’s soldiers ran towards the windmill from the town.
“My lord,” called one. “A column approaches! Fifty men!”
The soldiers by the mill straightened and looked to their weapons.
Von Volgen wheeled around. “Who is it?” he barked. “Friend or foe?”
“It is your cousin, my lord,” said the soldier. “Lord Oktaf Plaschke-Miesner, come from Zeder.”
Von Volgen’s face twisted into a cold sneer. “Foe then,” he said.
As those by the windmill watched, a double file of knights rode out of the village with a column of spearmen at their back. Leading them was an exquisite vision in red, black and gold. He rode a midnight horse with gold trappings, and was dressed head to foot in red garments of the finest quality, over which he wore a gleaming golden breastplate that looked like it belonged on the wall of a prince’s dining hall rather than upon the torso of a fighting soldier. His red doublet and puffed velvet breeches were slashed with doth of gold, and he wore a yellow feather in a broad black hat.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 23