[Angelika Fleischer 01] - Honour of the Grave

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “Figures in the trees.” With a flick of the head, she showed him where. Gelfrat kicked his horse. It bolted ahead. Benno followed. Angelika jumped free of her mule and ran to follow the two brothers; Franziskus came too. The soldiers stayed stupidly put. Soon, the officers’ horses were rearing up, refusing to press on through a scattering of large rocks. Gelfrat turned his horse around and rode back to their men. Benno calmed his mount, then leapt down from his back. He landed on his ankle, and exclaimed, more in surprise than pain. Angelika pointed up into the pines.

  “You see them?” she asked Franziskus. He nodded.

  Benno limped over. He stood behind Angelika’s outstretched arm and squinted. “I don’t see.”

  “They’re gone,” Angelika said.

  “Did you get a good look at them?”

  She shook her head. They had only been dark figures moving through the trees. But two of them were much shorter than the other; they might have been halflings. Like the knave who’d accosted her the night before.

  “It could be anyone up there, correct?” Benno said. “This whole pass crawls with goblins, skaven, outlaws… and Sigmar knows what else.”

  “If someone were keeping a watch on you,” Angelika asked, “who would it most likely be?”

  Benno raised his eyebrows and threw up his hands. “No one. No one would know why we’re here. Or care.”

  “Because we are being followed.”

  The clouds thickened overhead, and by the time dusk had finished its transformation into night, they had filled the sky entirely. They left the party in darkness, with not even the faint light of the stars to travel by. Angelika could hear the rat-ding of buckles against breastplates, and the breath of the men and horses around her, but she could see nothing. She stretched her hand out and spread its fingers. She could not see that, either.

  Benno slapped reins to his horse’s neck and called the party to a halt. “A devil’s choice,” he said. “We camp here, under the noses of our watchers, or we light lanterns—making it easy for them to follow us.”

  “If they follow us,” Gelfrat’s voice boomed from the blackness, “I say we make our stand here.”

  “What say you?” Benno asked.

  It took Angelika a moment to realise that the Averlander was addressing her. It was not the usual thing, for an Imperial officer to solicit advice from a border rat—or from a woman, for that matter. She pulled her cloak tighter. The temperature had been steadily dropping for the past hour. “Gelfrat’s right,” she said. “This is the Blackfire Pass, so we have to assume the worst—that whoever’s following us plans to attack. If we camp here, we can find a good place to defend ourselves from, and conserve our strength. Otherwise, we’re just waiting to be ambushed. And if I’m wrong, and there’s no one chasing us… a few more hours, here and there, will make no difference to your brother now.”

  Gelfrat muttered a complaint. The foot soldiers whispered to one another, uneasily.

  “I’d like to do this without lanterns,” Benno said, “but then again, I would prefer to be abed in Grenzstadt, with a sweet-smelling harlot snoozing on either side of me.” Angelika heard him dismount; he landed with surprising lightness. “Ekbert, Heinrich! Strike those flints of yours!”

  Angelika wormed her way off the back of her mule. It twisted its neck to snap at her. She coiled her muscles as someone touched her, cupping a hand around her shoulder.

  It was Benno; he spoke into her ear. His breath was warm. “We don’t want to be camping out here on the plain, do we?”

  “No,” she said. “Up in the hills. We can probably find a big rock to huddle against, that will shelter us from the wind. If we’re lucky, we can find a place with few approaches, which will be easier to guard. Tell the men to pick up any dead wood they find; we can lay it out on the pathways, so anyone coming will knock into it, and make noise. Branches with dead leaves still stuck to them are the best; they give off a good rattle.”

  “There’s no sense in the whole lot of us tramping blindly about. You and I will go,” Benno said, “and then come back for the others, when we’ve found something.”

  She nodded. Her travelling companions appeared all around her, painted in a warm yellow light: the men had lit the first of the lanterns. Angelika went to Franziskus and told him the plan.

  “I’ll go with you,” Franziskus whispered.

  “No, you stay here. If we both go with Benno, the others will suspect skullduggery. Stay here, and impress Gelfrat with your wit and scholarship.”

  “I’d have better luck training a boar to dance the gavotte.”

  She patted him on the cheek. The gesture was meant to be reassuring, but she got a funny look in return. So she punched him on the shoulder—hard. Franziskus blinked. “I’ll be back before you know it,” she said.

  Benno approached, lantern in hand. It lit up the bones around his eyes, and the underside of his neck, giving his face a sinister aspect. “East or west?”

  “Our pursuers were over there, to the right, so let’s take the leftward hills.”

  With nimble strides, Benno kept up with her. They walked in silence across the pass’ flat bottom, towards the east. Angelika liked a man who knew how to shut up. Behind her, she heard the whickering of horses and the low voices of their companions. A laugh erupted from the group, followed by an angry growl from Gelfrat, and then silence. Benno’s lantern summoned circling bugs, which made a secondary halo around its ball of light.

  They reached a slope, obscured by tall weeds and slick with dew, and battled their way up it. The brass links that clasped Benno’s elaborate cuffs clicked against the steel of his breastplate.

  “I should have lightened my load before setting out,” he gasped.

  “If we stumble into a nest of orcs or skaven, you’ll be grateful for that armour.”

  As the slope gave way to rockier ground, the lantern swung wildly in Benno’s hand, casting crazy shadows on the boulders and between the trunks of pines. She went ahead of him, so that it was her shadow, like a giant’s, that rippled across the hillside. Angelika thought she heard Benno slip, but when she looked back, he had already recovered. He was sweating and his face was flushed with effort. She stopped to choose a path, and to let him regain his breath. He wiped his hands on his black and yellow leggings.

  “It is a difficult life here,” he said, “but you may do as you like, hah? Go to find treasure one day, and ride with soldiers the next? No one to tell you what to do, or where to be.”

  She couldn’t imagine what he was getting at, so she elevated an eyebrow and cocked it at him. “The rest of you all have heavy armour, too, don’t you? And if you have to leave such costly gear behind with the horses, you won’t want to let it too far out of your sight, will you? So there’s no point picking a spot too far into the hills…”

  He shook his head, in what she took to be agreement. She pointed to a spot about fifty feet up, along a steep and narrow pathway. “That looks promising. Hold the lantern this way.” Benno moved the light, and she saw a telltale smudge across the sheer face of a large chunk of granite. “See that? Soot from an old campfire. You know what that means?”

  “I don’t claim to be a woodsman.”

  “It means, if that was good enough for somebody else to camp on, it’s good enough for us. I’ll climb up to make sure it’s all right. You stay here to signal the men.”

  “I hope you value it,” Benno said.

  “Value what?”

  “The freedom you have.”

  Her only answer to this was to scamper up the trail. The rock provided a nearly perfect place for them to rest for the night. And only one path led up to it. It would give them shelter from gusts coming down off the mountain. Loose earth padded the nearby ground, so the bedding would not be too rocky. Some past camper had thoughtfully dug a firepit for them, which they could safely use, when morning came, to warm their bones. She looked for tripwires and snares, and found none. She searched the rocks for chalked signs left by
goblins or beastmen; there were none of those, either. It would be a tight fit here, with all the men, and there was the danger that someone might roll off and drop down a hundred feet to the hard slope below… She decided to keep this minor drawback to herself. She would find no better spot, and was already growing weary herself. She waved to Benno, who circled his lantern in the air, alerting the men below to come and meet them. She sat, claiming the spot with the softest-looking ground, and huddled in her cloak. Her behind soon found a sharp rock, and she fought to dislodge it from the earth. It turned out to be bigger than she’d thought, so instead she moved over a little, leaving the pointy stone for whoever wanted to squeeze up next to her.

  She heard the men approaching and tensed up, taking her dagger from its sheath. They were making too much noise; if there was a predator waiting for them in the hills, it would know about them now. As they combed the hill for dead branches, they made an even greater ruckus. Angelika regretted her suggestion but it couldn’t be retracted now. Franziskus was still out there with the rest of them, no doubt diligently proving the superiority of his wood gathering. After a while, having heard no outbursts of sudden agony, she relaxed, and let slumber take her. Angelika had trained herself to fall asleep quickly, but to maintain a consciousness of her surroundings when dozing, and to jolt awake on the slightest sign of danger.

  Someone approached. She opened her eyes. It was Franziskus, about to shake her shoulder. She leaned aside, and he pulled back. He took his place beside her. But the sharp rock jabbed his buttock, so he stood and walked to her other side, and settled in. They watched the Sabres lay down bedrolls, circling each other grimly as they vied for the best spots. They tested their choices, lying down and locating the stones that lay beneath their rancid blankets. Stones large enough to be dislodged were torn from the loose earth and tossed into the bushes or off the precipice, where they thudded loudly. Angelika cringed. These were idiots, not woodsmen. One of the men began to gather sticks for a fire.

  “No fires,” Angelika called out. The soldier’s head turned towards her, but then he continued piling up kindling. She sat up, called out to Benno. “No fires. We’re being pursued, remember. Cold food only.” The stick-gatherer mouthed a curse, thinking that Angelika could not see his face from where she sat. The men fumbled through their packs for cooked sausages and bits of sinister-looking cheese rind.

  She put her back against the rock and shut her eyes. Loud snoring followed. She realised it was her. She adjusted her position, turning her head away from Franziskus, and managed to doze without further eruptions.

  She woke up when she felt someone pressing up against her from the other side. It was musky-smelling Gelfrat. She slit-ted her eyes open, and them saw Benno signalling his half-brother to move away from her. Gelfrat snorted. Benno kicked his boot until he shuffled over, leaving a good two feet between himself and Angelika. She shifted back toward Franziskus, laying her head on his shoulder, and returned to her slumbers.

  She was awake. It was morning. Grey light. An aching back. And something was wrong. She lifted her head from Franziskus’ still-sleeping shoulder. She looked around. Gelfrat’s heaving bulk shuddered to the left of her. The other men, except Ekbert, slept in a rough circle at her feet. She creaked her complaining leg muscles upward, to assume a crouch. She heard rustling. Her knife came out. She crept over to the path, rising a little. Her new viewpoint revealed a man, a few yards down the trail from her, crawling on all fours. His eyes met hers. Angelika saw a dagger’s blade clenched in his mouth. The whites of his eyes stood out against grime-coated skin. He wore a green kerchief on his head, and a sheepskin vest over a filthy white shirt. Behind him came another half-dozen men, all slipping up the trail on hands and knees.

  She hunched down so he could see her eyes. “By the time you get that knife out of your mouth and into your hand,” she said, “I’ll have a nice hole cut in your neck.”

  The man bobbed his head carefully up and down. He reminded Angelika of a dog with a bone clamped in its jaws. He signalled, to stop the men behind him from coming closer.

  “Now I’m going to reach over,” Angelika said, “and take the knife from your mouth. Then both of us will slowly stand up. Then we’ll all have a polite conversation, with no unnecessary bleeding. Yes?”

  The creeping man repeated his nod. She did as she’d said, reaching out with her off hand to delicately take hold of the dagger hilt. He opened his mouth, letting the weapon drop into her palm. She tossed it behind her. Supporting herself with the hand that had just held his blade, she rose from her crouch. The ambusher mirrored her movements. At his full height, he was still half a head shorter than her. His bare arms, however, were well developed. One of his eyelids fluttered nervously.

  “Turn around,” she told him. He turned. She placed her blade just below his neck, but did not touch it to his skin; that would be rude. “Tell me your name.”

  “Isaak.”

  “This is your chance to see how much your friends truly like you, Isaak.” She raised her voice to speak to the men on the trail. “As you can see, Isaak is in some trouble here. I don’t want it to get any worse, and I expect you all feel the same. So let’s all stay still and silent, while I awaken my companions. I’m sure you were sneaking up with some neighbourly intention; perhaps you wanted to warn us of poor weather ahead, so I reckon we’ll soon be sharing a laugh over this awkward misunderstanding.”

  “Do as she says,” said Isaak.

  Angelika whistled sharply, and didn’t stop until the men behind her began to stir. Benno and Franziskus were the first to be fully awake; they jostled the others. They leapt up, swords ready. Angelika waved them back. Benno’s men looked to him. He took a backward step, indicating that they should follow Angelika’s cues.

  Angelika spoke to Isaak: “Our friend, Ekbert, who was guarding the horses down there. You haven’t done anything permanent to him, have you?”

  “His skull will hurt, when he comes to.”

  “Well then. Nothing like a prisoner exchange first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ve seen you before,” Isaak said. “At the Dolorosa la Bara. You’ve been staying at the Castello. What are you doing with these murderous sons of dogs?”

  “Murderous?”

  “Watch your tongue, border rat!” shouted Gelfrat.

  “They wear the black and yellow, don’t they? Whose side are you on?”

  “I serve my own interests. Who are you, and what is your grudge against them?”

  “We are Prince Davio’s men. We fight under the banner of the Legione del Dimenticato. And the men behind you are cruel slaughterers, who have slain our brothers for no good reason.”

  Gelfrat charged forward to be next to Angelika. He shook his sword at Isaak. “Treacherous mercenary scum! If your crawling lizard of a so-called prince had honoured his word, we wouldn’t have had to waste our time punishing you!”

  “I see,” Angelika said, handing Isaak’s dagger back to him. “This is some prior dispute, to which I am not a party.” She stepped sideways, moving well clear, so that nothing stood between Isaak and Gelfrat. Both turned dumbfounded heads in her direction. Neither moved to attack the other. Angelika leaned her back against the rock and crossed her arms. She hoped she wouldn’t end up with too much soot on her clothing, but the gesture was worth some extra washing. “Since no one wants to die today,” she said, “perhaps we should put our weapons down.”

  From her new vantage point, Angelika could better see Isaak’s fellows. They seemed to have little in common, except that they were all men. The mercenary behind Isaak sported long, dark hair, and stared blankly ahead with yellow, glassy eyes. He’d wrapped himself in a long, blue coat, and had tied a strip of red cloth across his forehead. Next in line, a short, middle-aged man glowered. The white, curly hair on his head matched that on his chest, which was bared under an open linen shirt. The butts of twin pistols stuck out from his wide leather belt. Behind him was a fat man with a red nose from too m
uch rum. He coughed and trembled in a damp knit tunic and hooded wool cloak. There was nothing about these men to identify as a unit, or even soldiers. None wore armour.

  She’d keep her eyes on the pistol-carrying man. If this all went wrong, it was his guns that would pose the greatest danger.

  Gelfrat and Isaak locked gazes. Isaak swallowed; Gelfrat was easily a foot taller than he, and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. He did not shift a muscle.

  “Bah!” said Gelfrat, turning from the smaller man, “We’ll deal them a thrashing, if that’s what they want! But it’s not why we’re here.” He strode over beside Angelika, placing his spine against the rock, as she had. She moved aside to give him room. With his free hand, he punched at the rock.

  Angelika leaned forward, looking again at Isaak’s men. “Vou don’t perchance have any halflings with you?”

  “I trust my own kind only,” said Isaak.

  “But it was you, spying on us from the trees, last night?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. We came upon your man by chance this morning, on our way back home.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t know what reasons you have to accompany these men.” He ventured to take a step towards her. “But if you’ve agreed to work for the yellow and black, you should know you’ve signed on for a deadly bargain. You heard them admit it. They paid the prince so we would help them against the orcs. Yet when we failed to take as many greenskin heads as their war leader wanted, they came to slay us!”

  “Liar!” Gelfrat spat. “You stopped killing orcs entirely, when they got too much for you. You, and the border rat sellswords of the other border rat princes—you retreated inside your crapulent forts as soon as the fight grew tough! Cowards!”

  Isaak shortened the distance between himself and the big man. “My comrades were watering their horses by a stream, assuming we were safe from attack, when your men came crashing through the woods towards them. Nothing to worry about, they thought, they’re our allies. Then out came the swords and pistols, and a dozen good souls were murdered, before they could even draw their blades!” Isaak’s men followed him onto the small, circular ledge where Angelika had made camp. She squeezed up against the rock, thinking of the long fall, should anyone be shoved off. Franziskus had foolishly planted himself near an edge. She tried to catch his eye, to beckon him away from it, but he was too intent on the two angry men.