[Warhammer] - Broken Honour

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  “This one,” he finally managed to say. “He should be in gaol.”

  Erikson felt his stomach drop.

  “Why do you think I should be in gaol?” Dolf asked, his voice as smooth as a stiletto slipping through silk. “Have we met before?”

  Viksberg turned back to him, realising the trap that he was walking into. Although the flames of that terrible night had burned his scapegoat’s face into his memory, he could hardly admit to knowing him.

  “Don’t be so impudent,” he blustered, horrified at how much he had given away. “You look like a villain, that is all.”

  “Do I?” Dolf asked coldly.

  Viksberg’s mouth worked, but he had had enough. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the yard.

  “So do we pass muster?” Erikson asked, hurrying after him.

  “Yes,” Viksberg choked as he made his escape. “Why not?”

  Erikson watched him go, disappearing out through the entrance to the square they had been assigned to. Then, with a sigh of relief, he turned back to the men.

  “Porter, as soon as we fall out, start cooking lunch. That kind of near miss always gives me an appetite. And Dolf. Let’s me and you have a chat. The rest of you, well done. We are now on the muster of Baron Ludenhof. Sergeant, fall them out.”

  Alter did so, and as the men dispersed around the yard Erikson filled his pipe and considered his good fortune. Today had been the final hurdle. Now all he had to do was to protect his flock until he could shepherd it out to the slaughterhouse of the battlefield.

  It had taken Viksberg a lot of time and a lot of gold to track down the porters from the hospital. They hadn’t wanted to be found. The flames of the hospital were still bright in their memories. They danced through their nightmares, along with visions of the hangman’s noose. The last thing they wanted was to be seen with the mad man who had put them in such a hellish position.

  But he had wanted to see them and so, in amongst the ebb and flow of the city, Viksberg had finally found their lair.

  “Can’t fight,” a voice said as he banged on the door of their hovel. Since the hospital had burned down the porters had been left to fend for themselves; not an easy task in a city as crowded as Hergig.

  “The sisters can’t spare us,” another voice added.

  Viksberg, his nerves frayed by the expectation of the corning battle and pickled by the day’s gin, kicked the door open with a savage snarl. The two porters sprang to their feet, clutching at their staffs.

  “No need for that,” Viksberg told them as he let himself into the stink of their room. The only furniture consisted of a table, a pair of chairs, a bunk bed and a slop bucket that appeared to be almost full. Even so there was barely room for all three of them.

  “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” one of the porters said.

  “Nor have I,” the other agreed.

  Viksberg regarded them with undisguised contempt. Then he popped his head back out of the door to see that nobody had followed him, and closed it with a squeak of rusting hinges.

  “We have a problem,” he said. “It seems that the arsonist responsible for the fire at the hospital has been released from gaol.”

  “What fire?” asked one of the porters.

  “What hospital?” asked the other.

  If they had been smaller men Viksberg would have struck them. As it was he just pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. Why oh why had he agreed to accompany that idiot von Brechthold to battle? Everything had been going wrong ever since.

  “Listen, morons,” he said. “If he has been released, it could be because he has convinced somebody.”

  “Who?” asked one of the porters.

  “Never mind that,” Viksberg told him. “Just somebody is all. That’s why you have to get rid of him before he can do any more convincing.”

  “Get rid of him?”

  Viksberg nodded.

  “You’ll have to be careful. He’s in some sort of ragbag of a militia, Sigmar curse them. So now it’s down to you.”

  “Why us?” one of the men asked.

  “And not,” the other clarified, “you?”

  “Because people know me.” Viksberg, who had expected the question, was ready with the answer. “And because if we don’t silence him we’re all for the chop.”

  “Can’t be done,” was the immediate reply.

  “Not if he’s in a militia. Got no individuality, those mugs.”

  “Can’t do anything without help from their mates.”

  “That’s right.”

  “For Sigmar’s sake,” said Viksberg. “Just tell me what you want for doing the job so I can get out of this shithole.”

  One man pursed his lips. The other shook his head.

  “We’ll need gold,” said one.

  “And we’ll need a gun,” said the other.

  Viksberg snorted with laughter.

  “A gun? You’d blow your own heads off.”

  “Not us,” one said smugly.

  “Dad was a hunter,” the other explained. “Taught us how to shoot as soon as we could walk.”

  “Then why aren’t you in the long rifles?” Viksberg asked.

  “Didn’t fancy the hours,” both men said, this time in perfect unison.

  “Very well,” Viksberg decided. “I’ll bring you what you need. But it has to be done quickly. The longer we leave it, the more danger we’re in.”

  “Right you are, chief,” said one.

  “Leave it to us,” said the other.

  With a final glance around the shack Viksberg hurried off to collect their tools.

  Chapter Six

  In the grey chill of predawn the men rolled out of their blankets and formed ranks on the dew-slicked cobbles of their square. Despite the fact that the birds had barely begun to sing, the city all around them was alive with noise and movement. As the men shivered and thought wistfully of their bedrolls they could hear the marching feet and bellowed orders which echoed through Hergig, and the beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets.

  Today, the baron’s army was going to meet the enemy in the fields beyond. Today they were going to war.

  Erikson had dressed in his finery, his hat adorned with a blizzard of dyed feathers and his breastplate gleaming with a deep polish. Sergeant Alter, holding his halberd with an effortless panache, stood beside the captain and listened approvingly as he gave Porter and Gunter, the company’s newly appointed corporals, their instructions.

  “Remember,” Erikson told them. “Our job is to keep the formation in the right shape. To keep the ranks in line and the files tight. In time we’ll practise other manoeuvres, but for today all we have to do is make sure that we keep our square tight, tight, tight.”

  “Reminds me of a girl I knew once,” Porter said and licked his lips.

  His comrades regarded him with expressions which ranged from amusement to contempt.

  “She was a stickler for detail too.”

  “This is no damned detail,” Alter told him. “The formation breaks, and we’re finished. All of us. I’ve seen it happen before. Once men start running, they’re easy meat.”

  “But if the formation holds,” Erikson promised him, “we will have a good chance of coming out of this in one piece. And for today that’s all I want. No charges. No glory. No heroics. Just survival.”

  “Sounds good to me, boss,” Porter told him.

  “Address the officer by his proper rank,” Alter told him.

  “Captain it is,” Porter said with a gracious bow.

  “What you say makes sense,” Gunter said with the air of a man who had obviously been thinking. “But only so far. Let us not forget that we are here to smite the enemy. To clean him from our lands as Sigmar himself commanded us to do.”

  His mild tone was belied by the hard edge of fanaticism. It shone in his eyes even in the gloom of the courtyard. Erikson and Alter exchanged a look.

  “Trust me,” Erikson said, turning back to G
unter. “We’ll have plenty of chance to do that, and probably sooner than any of us would want.”

  As if summoned by his words one of Ludenhof’s heralds arrived. He wore a breastplate and greaves over the gilded velvet of his uniform, and instead of the placid contentment which usually characterised the expression of the average palace servant, his features were drawn with tension.

  “Captain Erikson?” he asked, his voice hoarse with anxiety. “It’s time for your company to go. Do you want me to show you the way to the gate?”

  “Why not?” Erikson smiled easily and grasped him by one shoulder. “And don’t look so worried. By tonight we’ll be celebrating the victory.”

  The herald looked at him, his eyes wide, and swallowed. For the first time Erikson noticed the grey bags of fatigue that lay beneath his eyes, and the way that his left cheek twitched. He frowned and wondered if using the man as a guide was such a good idea. Fear was as contagious as any plague. Fortunately, so was courage.

  As Sergeant Alter and the two corporals hurried back to their sections, Erikson turned to address the company.

  “Gentlemen,” he told them. “Today we will be united by our first battle. It will be frightening. It will be confusing. It will be bloody. But that is not your concern. Your only worry is to make sure that we hold our formation. If we do, we will come through this together. Are you with me?”

  With their cries still echoing in the yard Erikson turned to Dolf, his skinny frame dwarfed by the drum he wore slung across his shoulder, and nodded. The drumbeat rolled out eagerly, and as he called out the order to march Erikson could hear in it the old hypnotic pulse that he had followed across countless battlefields over the years.

  As he straightened his back and marched forwards it occurred to him that the drumbeat never really stopped. It was always there in the beating of the blood in his veins and the throbbing of the heart in his chest, an endless, irresistible call to march from one blood-soaked battlefield to the next.

  Well, no more, he decided. This is my last war. After this I am retiring.

  But even as he told himself this he could feel the energy that flooded through him and the anticipation of the savage joy to come, and he knew it to be the lie that it was.

  High on the gatehouse walls Ganamedes watched as the vast, living beast of his baron’s army uncoiled itself and streamed out from the cramped confines of Hergig.

  From this height it was possible to see the contrast between the barely controlled chaos which choked the streets of the city and the sharp-edged units which emerged from the gates to deploy into the wide open spaces below. Ganamedes, his eyes bloodshot after another night spent sweating with guilt, watched the army emerge and tried to find solace in the splendid geometries of its ranks.

  As always, the first through the gate had been the knights. In this great beast of an army the knights were the claws, hard and sharp and brittle. They were born to their role, and they moved within their armour as easily as beetles within their shells. The steeds which bore them had been bred for battle too, and despite the weight of steel they carried the warhorses trotted along with an easy grace.

  Ganamedes watched the green silk banner of the first regiment to emerge. The ghost of a smile passed across his face as he remembered the arguments there had been over precedence, and the baron’s impatience with his followers. Eventually he had ordered them to draw straws, and the great lords had done so as suspiciously as peasants squabbling over a windfall of apples.

  By the time the knightly regiments had emerged, the old man’s smile had gone. He watched as they spread out, using the space the fields afforded them to deploy into wide ranks. It was the best way of using these great open spaces, as it would give as many of them as possible the room to use their lances. The mighty spears were tipped with ribbons of brightly coloured cloth which fluttered in the breeze, the decorations lending a festive air to their murderous purpose.

  As the knights manoeuvred into position the state troopers were already marching out of the city. If the knights were the army’s claws, the troopers were its muscle, its hide and its sinew. What they lacked in individual killing power they made up for in sheer mass, and as they passed beneath him Ganamedes could feel the city’s stones vibrating beneath his feet as if in sympathy for its sons who now marched to war.

  By the time the last of the state regiments had emerged the sun had risen, cresting the hills in the east and casting the shadow of the city walls far out into the plain beyond. It was a clear blue summer’s day, and the tips of countless spears and halberds glittered like a field of stars above men who were still in shadow. Ganamedes watched them and blessed the city founders who had ensured that dawn light would follow the defenders out of the main gate.

  Not that he thought it would do them much good.

  He knew too much.

  He cast his eyes down and saw the regiments who were following the state troopers out. They were smaller, and their uniforms were little more than coloured rags tied around arms and heads. These were the militias. Some of them were almost as impressive as the regiments they would be attached to. A lot of the guilds had their own militias, like the smiths who he saw armed with hammers and covered with patchwork armour, and who practised their drill on feast days.

  Then there were the other militias. The dregs and scrapings of Hergig and the lands beyond. They varied in size from a score to a hundred and they didn’t so much march as tag along behind the main army. Only one of them seemed of any use.

  Ganamedes watched the hundred or so men of Erikson’s command as they marched behind the beat of their drum. Despite the ragged condition of their garb, and the bizarre collection of their weapons, they kept step with each other and had an almost military bearing.

  And then, finally, came the artillery. They rattled along on sturdy carriages which were drawn by stocky little ponies. The gunners themselves clustered around the mighty weapons like chicks around the mother hen. Some walked, others rode the ponies and more sat atop the wagons that creaked beneath the weight of powder and shot.

  Empty braziers and bundles of fuel swung from the sides of these wagons, and the mismatched vehicles and grizzled gunners made the artillery chain look more like a merchant’s caravan than the lethal engine of war that it was. Ganamedes wondered vaguely what part of this beast of an army the collection of cannon and mortars might be. Teeth, he decided. Or perhaps the roar.

  The last of the wagons emerged from the city. A hurried order rang out and the gates swung closed. Ganamedes watched the squares and rectangles of men spread out across the plain. There was nothing to interfere with the calculated geometries of their formations in that wide open space and they were laid out just as neatly as plans on a tactician’s slate.

  The sun cleared the city walls and set the army aglow. The blazing steel made Ganamedes’ bloodshot eyes water so much that the banners which fluttered above the army became so many multicoloured blurs. If only he hadn’t been cursed with the knowledge that had kept him awake for so many long and lonely nights. Then, perhaps, he might be able to believe in victory. As the first distant scouts sounded the alarm Ganamedes wiped his eyes and looked to the west.

  Then he wiped his eyes again. Beneath the panicked swarms of birds that rose up before it, the dark, distant line of the forest seemed to be moving forwards. Ganamedes squinted at the advancing tide, and he heard a roar as if from some distant ocean.

  The stone beneath his feet seemed suddenly less solid and the ranks of the army beyond seemed like no more than chaff before the wind.

  The beasts had come.

  “Drum the halt, Dolf,” Erikson told the youngster. He tried not to wince as the marching company stumbled to a ragged stop just beyond the city walls. A chorus of curses and complaints rang out as men were jostled or pushed back into place by their comrades, and their section leaders began to harangue them back into formation. Erikson pretended not to notice the confusion as a herald cantered up, pulled his horse around and sprang
from the saddle.

  “The Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig?” he asked, and cast a doubtful eye over the mismatched weapons that were waving around above the company’s heaving ranks.

  “That is indeed our name,” Erikson said, raising his voice above Porter’s sudden stream of curses.

  “Yes,” the herald said vaguely. He gazed at the company with horrified fascination before tearing his eyes away and delivering his message. “The baron commands you to move to a position equidistant between Jung’s Halberdiers and the Most Noble Company of Greatswords. If you would follow me I will act as your guide.”

  “In the front line?” Erikson asked, suddenly glad of the commotion which was distracting most of the men from the conversation. “This is a militia regiment, not a phalanx. Are you sure we’re to go in the front line?”

  The herald took another glance at the company and shrugged sympathetically.

  “Those are your orders,” he said. “If you wish to be relieved of your position in the line…”

  “No, of course not,” Erikson said hurriedly. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Very well, if you would follow me then. Double step, if you can manage it.”

  Erikson frowned. Forward of the line was a position for one of the great bastion regiments, a bristle of pikemen or the shield wall of a sword company. The only reason that a militia would be sent forwards would be if things were truly desperate.

  He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and smiled as brightly as the rising sun.

  “Dolf,” he commanded, looking down into the trusting eyes of his drummer. “Sound the advance.”

  The drumbeat started again, and Sergeant Alter’s voice rang out above it, calling the right, left, right of the march. They had not had time to practise double time any more than they had had time to practise much else, but at least they could march with something approaching a military manner. Between them Erikson and Alter had taught the men that much.