Since his narrow escape in the forest, Erikson had spent the nights in whatever sanctuary he could find and the mornings running to the next. After almost a fortnight of grudging accommodation and constant flight he had begun to grow scrawny and to suffer from a constant, bone-deep fatigue that never seemed to leave him. So it was that when he saw Hergig it was with the thankful joy of a pilgrim who has reached his shrine.
Although he had seen bigger cities he had not seen many better fortified. Perhaps because of the endless forests which lay in constant wait for them, the Hochlanders built their walls well. As Erikson approached he studied the impressive height of the granite walls, and the fine masonry above the machicolations. Towers studded the walls, their arrow slits scowling down on the lands below, and the crenellations were alive with distant guards.
When he drew close enough to smell the cheerful reek of the city Erikson felt as though he were coming home. It had been a while since he had been in civilisation, and as he elbowed his way through the refugees that were camped outside the gates he became aware of quite how filthy, and how ragged, he was.
Well, that would never do.
After paying the toll to the gate keepers he set about finding a room in an inn. The fee was exorbitant, but he soon forgot about it.
First he spent an hour in a hip bath, scrubbing a month’s worth of grime from his skin and then carefully shaving around the military curves of his moustaches. When he had finished he was as pink as a newborn babe, and as hungry.
He ordered bread and stew, and then bread and sausages, and then bread and cheese, and finally half a dozen baked apples. He drank his way through a jug of wine while he did so, and then a couple of glasses of schnapps.
By the time he had finished he was so stuffed that he didn’t even have enough appetite left for the plump little serving girl who had been looking at him so invitingly. Instead he checked that his sword was loose in its sheath, made sure his purse was secure in his breeches and then curled up on the almost unbearable luxury of a stuffed mattress. For twelve hours he could have been described as sleeping the sleep of the dead, if the dead had snored with such impressive volume.
The next morning he awoke, stretched, and after a breakfast of goat’s milk and pastries, went out to find a tailor. Only then, clean, shaved and resplendent in his finery, did he set out to hire his regiment.
* * *
He returned to his quarters that evening, if not worried, than at least concerned. After washing down a boiled ham with a gallon of ale he spent a while staring into the fire. It wasn’t until he took the serving girl to bed that he unburdened himself.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, Helga,” he told her as she lay with her head on his chest. “I’ve been in a dozen wars. More. But there are always men to be hired. Men desperate enough to want to fight.”
“Not here,” Helga told him, braiding her hair around her finger. “The baron has drafted every spare man into the regiments. He had to after he lost the last lot.”
Erikson smiled indulgently.
“Rulers always do that. It doesn’t mean anything. If men don’t want to fight, they can always find a way to escape. And if they are too slow-witted or infirm to do that, they’re no good anyway. Only the Bretonnians force men to fight, and a more miserable bunch of creatures you will never see. I fought them at Couronne once. We called it a great victory, but it was pathetic really. All they did was run around like a herd of sheep. The knights, though…”
He trailed off, remembering. The knights had been like something from a nightmare. Even when the cannon had opened up, the knights had still come on. If he hadn’t had the foresight to fill that hollow with sharpened stakes and then cover it over with bracken they would have killed his regiment to a man.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Helga said and, not liking the sudden dark mood that had seized him, poked him playfully. “You’re just being modest. Tell me about your battles.”
Erikson frowned.
“No. That’s no subject for the bedroom. I just need to think of where to find a couple of hundred men. Hard men. Or if not hard, at least desperate.”
“You have one hard man already,” Helga cooed, and Erikson stopped worrying and turned his attention to more pressing matters.
Hergig Gaol squatted amongst the squalor of the old tanners’ quarter. On the outside its walls were unmarked blind slabs of windowless granite, and although there were no battlements as such, the walls were topped with walkways. Crossbow-wielding guards prowled about on them with the indolent swagger of alley cats, half-hoping for a riot to provide a bit of target practice and relieve the boredom.
Unfortunately for them, there were seldom any riots in Hergig Gaol. Not any more. Not since Gort had taken over.
Nobody was really sure where the chief gaoler had come from, but all had heard the rumours about his sadistic genius for punishment. Even Erikson had heard some of the stories and now, sitting across from the infamous man in the stone-vaulted lair of his office, he could well believe them.
“Quite an impressive institution you have here, Herr Gort,” Erikson told the chief gaoler.
Gort accepted the compliment with a nod of his shaven head. His scalp seemed to be the only part of him not covered with hair. His beard was a dense thicket, and tufts of the same black hair curled out from his collar and his cuffs, and covered the fat little sausages of his fingers.
“I take my duties very seriously,” Gort replied. “Chief gaoler is a post many seek but few attain.”
“It must take real character to deal with such a lot of responsibility,” Erikson agreed, and looked out of the window into the grim little courtyard below. From their position in the gaoler’s office he could see every inch of the sand. Or at least he would have been able to if it hadn’t been hidden beneath a choked mass of humanity.
“It does.” Again Gort accepted the compliment with a nod. He refilled his guest’s glass with sweet white wine and then his own. They had been at this for half an hour already, but that was fine with him. He hadn’t become as rich as he had without developing a bloodhound’s nose for bribes, and the man who sat in front of him all but stank of gold.
“My job also involves responsibility,” Erikson finally explained. “I am a soldier, and a leader of soldiers. Sigmar gave me the ability to do both well, and I have been fighting his enemies all my life.”
Gort wasn’t impressed with the hard pride which flamed in his guest’s yellow eyes, but he was impressed by the ring of truth in his voice.
“There are certainly plenty of enemies about in Hochland,” he said carefully. “And not many soldiers to fight them.”
“Very true, Herr Gort. Very true. In such desperate times it is men like us, men of responsibility, who have to make do.”
The two men sat in a silence which might have been companionable if it hadn’t been so cautious.
It was Gort who broke it.
“Wouldn’t it be good if I could let you have some of those scoundrels?” He waved a podgy hand towards the prisoners below. Even though they were twenty feet away and on the other side of a window Erikson could see that some of them flinched at the gesture.
“It would be good,” Erikson nodded. “In fact, it’s an excellent idea.”
“Alas,” Gort sighed so deeply that his belly wobbled beneath his tunic, “regulations.”
And so saying he produced a hardbound book. It appeared in his hands as suddenly as a rabbit might appear in a conjuror’s hat, and he banged it down onto the table to emphasise its weight.
He and Erikson exchanged a long, cool glance, the hard stones of the mercenary’s eyes meeting their match in the unfathomable depths of the gaoler’s.
“It is well,” Erikson said, suddenly philosophical, “that men like us, men of responsibility, can improve upon regulations.”
“If only it were so.” Gort shook his head mournfully. “But as a humble servant of the baron, Sigmar bless him, my authority in that direct
ion is limited.”
“You are too modest.” Erikson waved the claim away. “I am sure that your judgement and discretion are invaluable when it comes to running this place. By the way, I noticed a small shrine on my way up to your office. Who is it to?”
“Ah yes, the shrine,” Gort nodded, happy to follow the sudden change of subject. “It is to Shallya. A lot of our guests have need of her after they arrive here.”
He grinned at his own humour, then realised what he had said. “Not that the prisoners aren’t in excellent condition, of course. But some of them are so aggressive. Yes, they love to fight.”
“Indeed.” Erikson allowed a look of scepticism to flit briefly across his face. “Anyway, I was thinking of making a donation to you. For the shrine.”
“Very generous of you.” Gort contrived to display a smile of wide-eyed innocence. “How much were you thinking?”
“One hundred crowns,” Erikson decided. “Not only that, but I’ll take a couple of hundred of those reprobates under my cognisance. I doubt if they’ll be much good, but they might as well die defending the city as in it.”
The chief gaoler hissed through his teeth, and gazed out over the inmates below so lovingly that each and every one of them might have been his favourite son.
“Let us try some schnapps,” he decided happily. “While we discuss your generous offer.”
Negotiations continued well into the night, and by the time Erikson left he was almost as light in heart as he was in wallet. He had his war and he had his men. Now all he needed was his commission.
Life, he decided as he staggered back to the inn, was good.
The feeling stayed with Erikson the next morning as he looked down at his new regiment. The chief gaoler had found him a round ten dozen, and true to his word they all seemed to be more or less fit and healthy.
At least, as fit and healthy as the inmates of a gaol can be.
Erikson stood on a box in the gaol courtyard, which had been cleared of all the other inmates. He held a charter in his hand. Multicoloured ribbons fluttered from the heavy vellum scroll like so many battle flags, and Erikson wielded it as though it were a marshal’s baton.
“Gentlemen,” he began, and his voice was loud enough to fill a parade ground, never mind the narrow confines of this mean yard. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Free Captain Joachim Erikson, late of Stirland, Kislev and Bretonnia. My god is Sigmar and my business is war. And, make no mistake, gentlemen, business is what it is.”
He paused and studied them, gauging their reaction. It was not one to inspire confidence in a military commander. They looked sullen, suspicious and resentful, and that was only amongst those who weren’t looking morosely into space.
Erikson didn’t care. It didn’t really matter what they were now. It was what he would make of them that counted.
“At the moment,” he reminded them, “you are prisoners. I don’t care why you are prisoners. I don’t care if you are innocent or guilty. All I care about is that, outside those walls, the forests are alive with vermin. Dangerous, murderous vermin that need to be destroyed. If you are willing, I will help you to destroy them.”
“Why in the name of Ranald’s balls would we want to do that?” one of the men asked. Erikson studied him with a keen interest. He wasn’t an imposing man. Beneath his baggy clothes he had a scrawny frame and a pigeon chest, and beneath his ragged blond hair his blue eyes twinkled out from a hollow-cheeked face.
And yet, although his shoulders were narrow there was a confident set to them, and although his face was bony it showed neither fear nor respect.
“A good question,” Erikson told him. “And it deserves a good answer. If you fight you will have both your freedom and a share in the spoils. Just because we are a free company doesn’t mean that we fight for free. Far from it.”
He winked at them and grinned, his teeth dazzling white in this gloomy place.
“Not much good to a dead man,” the sceptic said.
“Oh don’t worry about that,” Erikson told him, his grin spreading even as his eyes grew cold. “If you stay here you’ll be dead men soon enough. Imagine what will happen when the beasts break in here and find you all chained up like suckling pigs outside a butcher’s shop.”
“Come now,” another man interrupted. His voice was a deep baritone, and Erikson turned to see that it belonged to a thickset man with the shaved head and black robes of a Sigmarite priest. “Do you really believe that Hergig will fall to a pack of beasts?”
“Yes,” Erikson told him simply. “If we don’t all fight. Those same beasts have already destroyed one of your baron’s armies and you, my friends, are next.”
“Unless we fight,” the man said, and appeared to be thinking it over. Those around him watched in silence, their evident respect lending the man a gravity despite his tattered robes. “Well, then, I suppose I will fight. Better to face the enemy free and armed than locked in cages.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and it occurred to Erikson that he had found his first sergeant. Then laughter, as harsh and cold as a Reikwald winter, echoed out.
“Fight by all means,” an old man said. “Why not? But don’t be fools. You heard the good captain here. An army has been wiped out. An army of state troopers. Well trained. Well led. Well armed. What chance will we have?”
“I have heard something of the battle,” Erikson told him. “It would seem that the commander underestimated the threat. That won’t happen again. And you will be trained and armed. And fed,” he added, noting how skinny most of them were.
“That’s only the half of it,” the old man spat with disgust. “The regiments train for years, each man fitting into his formation just as each formation fits into the others. I should know. I was a halberdier myself for twenty years. A sergeant.”
“Then we have reason to thank Sigmar already,” Erikson told him. “I will have need of your talents. We all will. If we are to play our small part in the baron’s host, then we will need to train, and that relentlessly.”
“I don’t care about that,” somebody else interrupted, a young voice full of determination. “I just want to fight.”
Erikson looked down into the lad’s eye’s. He barely seemed old enough to be here. Like so many of his comrades he had a wasted frame, but beneath the red mop of his hair his eyes glittered with a hatred that filled Erikson with a wary satisfaction. He had seen that sort of hatred before. Had seen what it could do.
“Why do you want to fight?” Erikson found himself asking.
“Those things killed my family when I was a babe,” he replied simply, “and I have nothing else.”
There was a heartbeat of silence before another man took the opportunity to complain.
“It’s all very well for those who are to be hanged,” he said, his voice an irritating whine, “but what about those of us who aren’t?”
Erikson allowed himself a look of cool contempt as he regarded the complainant. The man had weak eyes beneath a receding hairline, and they refused to meet Erikson’s. But Erikson didn’t care. Like a good angler he knew when the time was right to strike, and it was now.
“Nobody is forcing you to sign anything,” he told the assembled men. “I don’t want slaves, I want comrades, which is why the choice is yours. You either join up, in which case you’ll have freedom, full bellies and a chance to make your fortune in this war. Or you don’t. You stay here and wait for the beasts to find you. So what’s it to be?”
“Well if you put it like that,” the first man to have spoken said, “I think I’d be a fool not to. Where do I put my mark?”
“Right here,” Erikson told him, unfurling the parchment and hoping that nobody would realise that the text he had written so beautifully across it was pure nonsense.
Chapter Four
The feasting had been sublime. The warriors’ flesh had been lean and tender, and their blood had been maddening in its potency. Its sweetness had filled the victors with dark fires of animal
rage and they had fought and rutted and lost themselves in a blood-soaked orgy that had lasted for days.
There had been so much meat after the slaughter that every single member of the herd had filled its belly. Even the pathetic, almost human things that skulked around the edges had eaten their fill of man-flesh, squabbling for precedence over remains which their betters had been too glutted to eat.
Alone amongst the thousands, Gulkroth had shown some restraint. While his lords lost themselves in the bestial excess that surged around the battlefield, and whilst his shamans, as gorged as ticks on blood, had used their gluttony to launch themselves into the terrible abysses of their nightmarish visions, Gulkroth had eaten sparingly and thought.
He had had the body of the humans’ lord brought to them. The meat was old and stringy, but that didn’t matter. Its heart was strong, and its liver was rich with wisdom. Human wisdom.
In the midst of the carnival Gulkroth sat and thought. Occasionally one of his herd would come too close or smell wrong or look at him. When that happened he killed with a natural savage joy, glorying in the power that warped through his veins and the effortless slicing of his fangs through hide and muscle and bone.
For the most part, though, he sat and thought. If he could have, he would have withdrawn his herd into the dark reaches of the forest, but he knew that to do so would have been to court mutiny. There would be no reasoning with any of his kind until the tide of their victory had ebbed away and the flames of their bloodlust had burned down to ash.
It wasn’t until the second night, after he’d had time to digest the human’s liver, that he began to summon his lieutenants.
Viles had been one of the first he had called. He had led the charge of his brother centigors into the humans’ wavering flanks, and had been feasting ever since. The man-flesh had kept him awake and wracked him with an almost unbearable energy which he had burned off in wide, wild gallops through the forest. His hide was torn and studded with thorns, but neither that pain nor the glorious waves of blood-fuelled euphoria that surged through him did much to allay his fear.
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