01 - Honour of the Grave

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “I don’t know what happened,” Gelfrat conceded. “I was not at the fight you’re talking about. All I know is that the border princes betrayed us, and had to be shown the cost of that.”

  “You don’t deny that they were basely slain, then?”

  Gelfrat looked down on his adversary. “Do you deny that your men then attacked one of our regiments, which was already taxed and wounded from fighting the greenskin? That you slew them nearly to a man? Is that what you slimy rodents call a fair fight?”

  Isaak made fists. “That was just vengeance!”

  “They weakened themselves battling the orcs—who aim to destroy us all—and you took the chance to cut them down like stalks of wheat. I say our only error was in not killing more of you!”

  The pistolier gripped the polished oaken handles of his weapons. His eyes parted ways: one pointed at Gelfrat, the other, at Benno. Angelika decided that her hundred and twenty-five crowns were in jeopardy.

  “How long have you been out on the trail, Isaak?” she said.

  “Nearly a month. We were sent south, to recruit replacements for our fallen friends.”

  “These men were allowed to enter the Castello unmolested. Prince Davio could have easily taken them hostage, or worse. It could be that he’s reconciled with the Averlandish commander. You know how quickly allegiances shift, hereabouts.”

  He sank the back of his left hand indecisively into the palm of his right. “All things are possible in the Blackfire…”

  “Perhaps then you should know for sure where Davio stands, before you wreak any more vengeance for him. If he’s settled his dispute, he won’t be happy for you to stir it up again.”

  He stood thinking, his tongue working around the inside his mouth. After taking a long pause, he said, “I will remain facing you, as will my comrade Ivan, here.” He indicated the gunman. “The rest of my band will turn their backs to you, and head down the trail. Then the two of us will follow. We will leave your man as he is now, tied up. We’ll ride away, and you will not pursue us.”

  “No doubt you’ve already stolen our horses,” said Benno. “So it’s an easy promise to make.”

  Isaak employed a dark-rimmed fingernail to pick at a morsel of food lodged between his front teeth. “We don’t want to kill each other over mere horseflesh, do we?”

  Benno shook his head.

  “If you do cross us,” Isaak continued, “we’ll grant you no mercy. Our numbers equal yours, and we know this country better than you.”

  “Be gone then,” Gelfrat said, “before your boasts fatally bore me.”

  The border men executed their retreat as Isaak had said. Following Gelfrat’s example, the Averlanders affected postures of varying disinterest. Gelfrat studied his fingernails, as if contemplating their overdue annual cleaning.

  As he turned to go, Isaak said, to Angelika, “You’ve saved your companions from harm, but you must not trust them.”

  Scornfully, Gelfrat cleared his throat. When he saw that Isaak and Ivan had reached the slope below, he stepped towards the trail. Benno held him back. “Wait till we see them ride off.”

  “What if they stick a knife in Ekbert?”

  “They’ll leave him for us to deal with.” A hardness had appeared on Benno’s face, provoking a doubtful look from his half-brother.

  “Vou don’t mean to—”

  Benno went to relieve himself against the big rock. His men took the same opportunity. As they watered the boulder, Angelika cast a revolted look up into the white-grey sky.

  The faint sound of hoofbeats echoed up from the valley. Benno pulled at the drawstring of his leggings, adjusted his codpiece, and headed down the path, angrily kicking away the branches they’d laid down the night before. “It’s fortunate that Angelika was with us, to hear them coming, or our bellies would now gape open.” He spoke in a raised voice, but his nose pointed heavenward, so it wasn’t clear who he was talking to. “Sigmar knows, it would be foolish to expect an actual member of the company to execute my orders.”

  “Do not take it out on poor old Ekbert,” Gelfrat said, in a pleading tone. Angelika found it comically strange, coming from him. He bounded around the soldier called Heinrich, who had been between the two brothers.

  “The Black Field Sabres do not tolerate dereliction. You know that.”

  “But Ekbert has been a Sabre since before we were born.”

  “Discipline must be maintained,” replied Benno.

  “For years, he rode at our father’s side!”

  “And you know what father would demand, if he were here.”

  Gelfrat hung his head. Angelika noticed a couple of the other soldiers exchanging worried looks. This Ekbert had made little impression on her, and she couldn’t see herself caring two hoots for his fate. Even so, she felt a certain tautness above her breastbone.

  They found Ekbert lying on his side, among the weeds and wildflowers. His wrists were tied together, as were his ankles. Isaak’s men had taken the mule and horses, as well as all the breastplates and helmets. Ekbert wriggled as the company drew near, wheezing and puffing, his face slick with dew. Blades of grass stuck to it. Benno stood over him, and wrinkled up his nose. The old campaigner had soiled himself.

  “Heinrich, untruss this goose,” Benno ordered. The younger soldier slunk reluctantly up and sliced the thin, dirty cords that bound Ekbert’s wrists and ankles. He scuttled back as soon as he was finished. Ekbert stayed down even after Heinrich had freed him. “I’m sorry,” he burbled.

  “I’ve never seen sorrier,” said Benno. He kicked him in the teeth. Gelfrat flinched.

  “Such are my just desserts,” Ekbert moaned. The kick had split his lip; he bled onto his mutton-chops.

  “You deserve far worse. We could all be dead now. Get your fat carcass up!”

  Trembling, Ekbert heaved himself to his hands and knees. Gelfrat came to him, stretching out an arm to grasp. Benno pushed it away. Ekbert tottered up on his own.

  Franziskus grabbed Angelika’s elbow. She looked down and saw that she’d had her dagger an inch out of its scabbard. She shoved it back in. She nodded to Franziskus. He let her go. His eyes were moist, she saw.

  “This calls for thirty lashes,” Benno said. “If it were anyone else, it would be Ekbert who’d administer the whipping. But in this case, the honour must fall to his defender. Gelfrat?”

  Gelfrat leaned back. “Benno, don’t—”

  “Lieutenant, the formality of the circumstance calls for you to refer to me as lieutenant.” Benno turned to Heinrich and instructed him to retrieve the lash from Ekbert’s pack.

  A decision registered on Gelfrat’s face. He held out his hand to receive the lash’s handle. He put his other hand on Ekbert’s shoulder. “Come over to that log there,” he said, indicating the dark trunk of a fallen tree, its bark riddled with lichen and round beige shelves of fungus. Ekbert moved to it with a sleepwalker’s slowness. He removed his coat and shirt, draping them over the log.

  “Don’t stint,” Ekbert told Gelfrat. “Strike hard, and cleanse my debt of honour.”

  Angelika turned her back, to spare herself the sight of Ekbert’s punishment, but there was no escaping his cries, or the sound of wet leather crackling into his flesh.

  CHAPTER THREE

  With everyone now on foot, Angelika argued for a route that concealed them in the hills. Benno insisted that they stick to the bottomlands, instead of tramping through rocks and brambles. But then the sky began to rumble, and the travellers could not be sure whether it was thunder, or the booming of orcish war drums. They chose the hills.

  Ekbert trudged with laboured steps; his coat hid the spreading blood that glued the shirt to his back. Gelfrat kept by his side, to steady the old man if needed. Angelika protected herself from the sight of this, and what it aroused in her, by keeping to the head of the party, alongside Benno. In today’s grey light, he didn’t look good from any angle.

  About two hours into their journey, a drizzle started up. They too
k a moment’s shelter beneath a tall and leafy oak; Gelfrat passed his wineskin. Angelika took a sip, but it was rancid. She wished she’d thought to bring some brandy.

  “It won’t get any drier,” she said, watching the sky darken. They pushed on. The rain grew heavier, soaking through their cloaks and tunics. Angelika spotted a small cave, and they all squeezed into it. Soon after they had arranged themselves inside, spears of sunlight broke through the clouds, and the rain resolved itself into a mist. Angelika reached out a hand, and declared it time to move on. Benno plodded after her without comment, his soldiers trailing behind him.

  When there were about three hours of light left in the day, Angelika stopped to peer up at the mountaintops. Landmarks were scarce here; one section of the pass looked pretty much like any other.

  “I think I recognise that peak there, with the cleft in the middle,” she said. “If I’m right, we’ve got about a league left to go.” She increased her pace, thinking of the best spot to hide her pay. She’d decided that these Averlanders were bad men—same as any men—but they would not try to cheat her. She kept an eye for a trail leading down into the valley, finding one about fifteen minutes into her search. She stopped to listen: she heard birdsong and a light wind playing on tree branches. Satisfied that it was safe to descend to open ground, she whistled a warning to the men behind her and took the path down. It was a light trail, most likely made by boars or deer. Midway along, she surprised a fat marmot, grey with a brown ruff at the back of its neck. It sat up and shrieked angrily at her, but did not think to run until she stamped her foot at it.

  “We could have eaten that,” Gelfrat said.

  “Are we here to dine on marmot, or recover your brother’s bones?”

  She reached the flat terrain of the valley floor and looked around to orient herself. For many hundreds of yards, lightly forested slopes, dotted with boulders and stones, gradually gave way to level scrubland, which extended all the way across the valley to the hills and mountains on the pass’ opposite side. She saw a curtain of rock ahead. Angelika kept walking, skirting the grade, until she saw a place where the mountain rock descended to the valley, in a sheer curtain of crumbling limestone at least forty feet high. A recently fallen slab of stone lay at its feet, others teetered up on the cliffs edge. Angelika knew this spot; it was her landmark.

  “How much further?” asked Gelfrat.

  “We’re there,” she said. She walked, hugging the cliff wall, until she stopped at the edge of a bowl-shaped depression. It was an old sinkhole filled in by soil washed down from the hills. New spruces, few of them higher than six feet tall, competed for space along its slopes. Angelika waded into them, parting the young trees.

  “Wait,” yelled Benno, from the sinkhole’s edge. “This is it?”

  “Yes,” said Angelika, continuing down into the thickly massed spruces.

  “When you first came upon this place—how did you know where to look?” asked the Averlandish officer, placing a tentative boot over the depression’s edge. “I see only trees.”

  “In the same way I find any fresh battle,” she called back. “I followed the crows.”

  She heard the sound of spruce needles brushing against cloth: Benno, Gelfrat and the others had descended and were wading through the trees. Something crunched under her boot. She lifted up the sole: she’d stepped on a finger bone, snapping it. “We’re here!”

  She couldn’t remember exactly where she’d picked up the emblem, except that it had been in a patch of muddy, treeless ground. As she slipped between spruces, her toe hit a skull, making it roll over. She dropped to her knees and set it respectfully next to its ribcage, which lay nearby and wore torn black-and-yellow. Angelika could hear that some of the others were close by.

  “How will we recognise your brother?” she called. “Or do you mean to haul back all your comrades?”

  “Officer’s cuffs have gold threading!” Benno shouted. He seemed to be over to her left. “Failing that, we’ll judge by the boots. They were buckled in gold. Their heels bear the mark of Grenzstadt’s best cobbler!”

  Angelika ducked down to finger the cuffs of the skeleton at her feet. They seemed ordinary enough. She thought it impolitic to mention that she’d taken the gold buckles from a pair of boots, and sold them. If she could remember where she’d found that particular haul, she’d have Claus’ remains… She closed her eyes, trying to picture the moment. She’d sat on a large, bench-shaped stone while she’d pried the buckles loose from the boots, and it hadn’t been too far from where she’d laid hands on them. “Look for a boulder, flat enough to sit on!” she shouted.

  “Like this?” Franziskus called. She tracked the sound of his voice, parting trees until she found him. He was by the stone, and kneeling over a tunic, which lay in the midst of a pile of scattered bones. Wolves had been at it, or wild pigs, perhaps.

  She stood and waved her arms above her head. She could see the top of Gelfrat’s head, poking up over the trees around him. “Over here!” she proclaimed. Gelfrat crashed over to her. After examining her discovery from a distance, he unhooked the scabbard from his belt and used it to jab tentatively at the skull, and tunic. Benno appeared. Gelfrat used the scabbard to lift the ripped and bloodied shirt, and held it up before him. Benno took it and stretched it out. The garment was large; its wearer had been nearly as big as Gelfrat. Benno checked the cuffs.

  “That’s him,” he said. “Are the boots here?”

  “They’re missing,” said Angelika.

  Benno subjected her to a prolonged and searching look. She blinked blandly back at him.

  “It’s Claus, then?” Gelfrat asked.

  “It’s Claus,” said Benno. The two stood and regarded the bones.

  “Well then,” said Angelika.

  Gelfrat turned and embarked on a search of the needle-strewn ground around the flat rock.

  “So this is him?” Angelika said.

  Benno nodded, distractedly.

  “Then my payment has now come due.”

  “In a moment,” he said. “You didn’t find a… second pair of boots, also with golden buckles?”

  “I don’t recall saying I found any gold buckles.”

  “There is a second officer. We must find his remains as well.” He glanced at Gelfrat, then headed off in the opposite direction, vanishing into the trees.

  Beckoning Franziskus to come with her, Angelika slipped gracefully through the little forest. He kept up well, mimicking her stealth. The others still thrashed enthusiastically amongst the spruces, unconscious of their movements. She led Franziskus to the sinkhole’s westward edge, then hefted herself up the slope, grabbing onto trunks and branches as she went. Soon her fingers were sticky with their resin.

  “Where are we going?” gasped Franziskus.

  “Just follow,” she said.

  Shouts came from below. She craned her head to see Gelfrat bouncing up and down amid the spruces, shaking his fist. The big man was chasing, but he wasn’t agile enough to thread between trees. He kept smacking into them. He ducked to hurl a stone, but it landed wide of them and tumbled back down the incline. Angelika reached the lip of the bowl and gave Franziskus a hand up. Gelfrat was now battling his way up the slope, but for every forward stride he took, he slid half a step back. Angelika yanked on Franziskus’ arm and pointed to the hills.

  “What are we doing?” asked Franziskus. She did not answer. She ran at full speed across a small stretch of flatland, then bounded up onto an incline of exposed, yellowish rock. Nature had arranged it into a rough set of terraced steps. She leapt from one ledge to the next.

  Franziskus scrambled to match her. Blood crashed in his temples; he heard more shouting from below. He did not dare turn around to see if the Averlanders were giving chase, or how close they might be. Above him, Angelika sidestepped into a copse of scraggly pines. She was a blur between trees. He copied her leap and landed, to slide on wet needles. Franziskus pounded after her, as she hit the peak of a ridge and then dr
opped down past it, disappearing from view. He reached a flat bit of ground, which wound like an overgrown road, hugging a wall of mountain rock. Finally he found her, behind a tall bush with broad and waxy leaves. She was hunched over, with her hands on her knees, and out of breath. Beads of sweat fell from her face to the forest floor. He threw himself against a tree and heaved in cool lungfuls of mountain air. It took him a while to find the power to speak. “Why—what did we just do? Why did we run?”

  “They were lying to us,” she said. “They weren’t there for Claus’ sake. Something else is afoot.”

  “You misjudge them. They are good and fine soldiers. Better than me.”

  “They’ve deceived us.”

  “It’s because of the thrashing they gave Ekbert, isn’t it? It’s turned you unfairly against them. You don’t understand—Benno’s commands were harsh but correct. It was Gelfrat who was in the wrong.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing to do with that. There’s another one of them—my guess is another von Kopf—and they think he might still be alive.”

  “What?”

  “When we found Claus’ bones, did it seem to you like they knew what to do with them? For all their talk of taking the body back for proper interment, you’d think they’d have brought a coffin or casket with them. A fine box of inlaid oak, at least. But they had nothing of the kind. And then when they asked about a second pair of buckles…” She paused to stop and breathe again, and to listen for the sounds of pursuit. “You see, I’ve been holding back something from them, too.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “It wasn’t the cawing of crows that took me to the scene of that battle. I’d been following the Averlanders for weeks. I watched them as they drove off a force of orcs three times their number.”