The meeting went on until the servants came in to light the braziers which lined the walls. As the remaining woodsmen filed out to find their dinners and to tend to their animals and men, the baron and the provost marshal remained behind, alone in the echoing vastness of the great hall. The braziers cast their shadows across the flagstones, and the occasional draft sent them fluttering about like ghosts.
They weren’t the only ghosts in the room.
“We’ve got rid of more than half of the stones,” the provost marshal said. “Or at least, half of the stones we knew about.”
“Yes,” the baron said as he peered out of the slit windows into the darkness of the night.
“Do you think it will be enough to bring the enemy to battle?”
“We shall see,” the baron sighed. “It’s at times like this that I miss Ganamedes. He always had an idea, even if it was the wrong one. I knew him ever since we were boys.”
Steckler said nothing. Ganamedes had died soon after he had told them what he knew, his heart giving up whilst he was still strapped down in the dungeon.
“Poor old Ganamedes,” the baron said, talking to himself. “What could he have been thinking of?”
“And yet,” Steckler offered, “if we do drag the enemy to battle, and if we can defeat them there, then we will have Ganamedes to thank for it. Without his knowledge… his blasphemous knowledge… the enemy could have gnawed away at our strength until there was nothing of us left.”
“All over Hochland men are fighting, dying, scraping together what courage they can,” the baron said. “I wonder what the witch hunters would say if I told them that, by following his heretical studies, Ganamedes was one of the most valiant of them?”
Steckler didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. Baron or not, he knew exactly how the witch hunters would react to such blasphemy.
The baron treated himself to another moment’s peace before sighing, turning on his heel and going to read through the day’s scouting reports.
It was midday when Erikson realised that they were being followed.
They had been double-timing it ever since they had fought their way clear of Nalderstein, jogging through the night despite their hunger and exhaustion and the weight of those that needed to be carried.
He had counted on getting clear before exhaustion took them but now, as the ragged column stumbled to a halt at his signal, Erikson knew that the gamble hadn’t paid off.
“Halt,” he called back down the line. “We will take five minutes’ rest. Finish your water.”
His followers collapsed with mindless relief. In amongst the soldiers there were the refugees they had rescued. There were pitifully few of them.
Perhaps a dozen women, each with at least one infant strapped to their backs. A score of children. A couple of old crones.
They were all that had remained alive by the time the company had reclaimed the barn.
“Dolf.” Erikson led the drummer to one side. “Look back there. Can you see anything?”
Dolf looked back, eyes unclouded by years. For a moment he gazed into the blue distance, then he caught his breath and his eyes widened.
“Are they the enemy?” he whispered.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said, “but I suppose they must be. We didn’t leave much else alive behind us.”
The two of them squinted, so intent on the line of figures that they jumped when Gunter spoke up behind them.
“Work left undone always finds its doer,” he intoned.
“Do you have a point, corporal?” Erikson asked him. “I’m too bloodied, too hungry and too exhausted to worry about riddles.”
“That is no riddle, but one of the great truths from the ballad of Sigmar Heldenhammer,” Gunter replied with a limitless patience. Although he had fought as hard as any man, he seemed remarkably untouched by their predicament, and through his irritation, Erikson was grateful for that.
He also knew exactly what the man was trying to say.
“You are right, of course,” he said. “The question is, how do we finish this job?”
Porter, who had appeared to be out of earshot, spoke up.
“When we were on the leg we always used to split up as soon as possible,” he said. “Don’t let the watchmen know who to follow and you’re halfway free.”
“These aren’t watchmen,” Erikson told him. “And anyway, all that means is that they will catch the slowest.”
“So?”
“So what was the point of taking them with us in the first place?”
Porter opened his mouth to argue, but before he could he saw a toddler chase a butterfly through the wheat, laughing uproariously all the while. The child fell and Porter, instead of pressing his point, just lay back and sighed.
“Then what do we do?”
“It’s obvious,” Gunter told him.
“Tell us,” Erikson said, and so Gunter did.
Hruul ran through a world which was ablaze with a thousand maddening tastes and smells. He could sense the life in the rodents which scuttled through the hip-deep sea of wheat that stretched away to every horizon. On the back of his neck he could feel the bright, lethal gaze of the raptors which circled overhead and, stronger all the time, he could smell the terror of the fleeing humans.
Although he and his followers had been working and fighting for days, they ran with the exuberant energy of foals. While the red harvest they had reaped within Nalderstein had pushed some of the herd into a stupor, it had the opposite effect on him and his twenty followers. It had filled them with a daemonic energy which pulsed through their ripening muscles as they ran, full-bellied yet ever ravenous.
The sun cast their shadows out before them, and the dark shapes clawed towards the fleeing humans. Every hour they had grown nearer and now, when they were less than half a mile away, Hruul bellowed a challenge.
He was disappointed to see that most of the men had outstripped the panicking mob ahead. Only a dozen or so warriors remained with their young. They broke into a pathetic attempt at a sprint as Hruul and his followers thundered into a charge.
Somewhere deep beneath the pounding of his hooves and the eternal thunder of his heart, Hruul sensed something in the wheat. Something new. But before he could register what it was he saw the soldiers ahead turn and fall back into a single rank, their weapons glittering in the sunlight. As their young continued to scurry away a drumbeat started and the men advanced towards Hruul’s charge.
Almost at the same time a series of grunts and screams broke out from behind him. Hruul turned, snatching a glance back over his shoulder, and realised immediately what he had sensed moments before. The rest of the soldiers hadn’t fled. They had been hiding, lying flat in the furrows between the endless rows of wheat. And now they were amongst his followers.
Hruul saw the first of his herd go down, its tendons sliced neatly through. He staggered to a halt, confusion boiling up as he regarded the charging line of the soldiers in front and those who had appeared in their rear. With a roar he abandoned the effort to reason and followed his rage towards the nearest of the enemy.
It was a wiry little runt of a man, and he looked small enough to be crushed in a single paw. Hruul grunted and slashed at him. His axe severed a shower of wheat but there was no satisfying thunk of steel on bone. Instead the rodent of a man rolled away.
“Brandt,” Porter squeaked, twisting as he slipped through the wheat. “Where are you?”
Hruul ignored the creature’s chattering as a more worthy foe appeared in front of him. Behind the man he caught a glimpse of the confusion of bodies which struggled through the wheat, men and beasts lunging and slashing at each other.
Then he felt the deep, hard bite of a blade into the banded muscle of his thigh.
He screamed with rage and surprise and staggered away from the blow.
“Sigmar’s balls!” Porter snarled as he ducked back away. “The sod took my blade with him.”
Brandt didn’t waste time in deb
ate. He was already swinging his heavy, double-handed blade at the beast. The steel bounced off its ribcage and he bellowed in frustration as the momentum carried him off balance.
Hruul, instinctively recognising the danger of fighting two enemies at the same time, turned and bounded clear before pirouetting back to find a new target. As he did so the second group of soldiers burst into the combat. The solid impact of their line pushed the swirling melee back, and although a couple of them fell beneath the axes of the herd even more beasts were slaughtered.
Hruul realised that he wasn’t the only one whose enthusiasm for the battle was waning. It was one thing to face your enemy with steel and muscle. It was quite another to find him on every side of you, cutting you off from your herd and snapping at your heels.
A flash of pure, blinding aggression washed through him. Partly it came from the surfeit of human blood upon which he had gorged. Mainly it came from the twisted, ever-burning depths of his bestial soul.
“Fight!” he roared, lifting his axe as though it were a battle standard. “Stand and…”
Death found him like that.
It came silently and unseen. For a moment he stood in a moment of perfect, mindless calm. Then he was falling, plunging into the swirling darkness that led from this world to the next.
He fell even before the distant report of the rifle reached him. More shots rang out, the distant volley sounding like little more than the popping of kernels in a fire. But although the weapons spoke with a soft voice the bullets punched through the beasts like needles through cloth.
One of the beasts was caught in the shoulder, and the bullet exploded outwards along with a pink shrapnel of bone and a spray of arterial blood. Another was hit in the stomach, the lead ball punching through its intestines to shatter its spine and leave it flopping on the ground as helplessly as a gutted fish. A third was shot in the eye, a perfect piece of marksmanship that killed it before it could blink.
Hruul had barely started cooling before his herd, the meat sickening in their stomachs and their fury giving way to terror, turned and ran. Erikson’s men made no move to pursue them. Instead they stood amongst the trampled wheat and corpses and wondered at the fortune which had spared them.
“Get down!” Erikson told them as the distant reports of gunfire volleyed on. “Give ’em a clear shot.”
The men hunched down and watched, cheering each time one of the enemy was felled. It wasn’t until the fleeing beasts were far out of range that the gunfire stopped and, appearing out of the wheat on a distant slope, a figure stood up and saluted with a wave of his bedraggled cap.
“Freimann!” Erikson grinned, and realised that he did like the man after all.
Chapter Fourteen
Kapriwar enjoyed the lashing of the undergrowth against his flanks, and the kiss of the occasional thorn which punctured his hide. The pain acted as a distraction from the throbbing in his head, and he needed any distraction he could get. He had been galloping for what felt like a lifetime, the days and nights blurring together as he had crossed mountains and rivers and endless forests. And over those days the agony of the words had become almost unbearable.
The pain was such that the first he knew about the herd was when he burst in upon them. They turned on the intruder, fangs bared and axes raised, but before they could attack a withered old beast growled at them and they lowered their weapons.
“You come with a message?” he asked. The messenger just looked at him dumbly, his flanks heaving beneath the foaming of sweat and blood. The shaman nodded. He had a message, all right.
“Bring food,” he told one of the herd. Although the beast stood half as high again as the shaman, it reacted with an alacrity that spoke of respectful terror.
“Now,” the shaman said, stalking forwards and carefully taking the messenger’s head between his hands. “Rest a while, eat a little, and we will see what you have to say for yourself.”
The messenger garbled something, but his words were crushed between those that throbbed within his mind. The shaman ignored him. He would wait until the beast had recovered before finding out what he had to say.
Time passed. As the messenger feasted on deliciously putrid lumps of man-flesh, the Chaos Moon crawled up over the horizon and chased the sun from the sky. The patterning of light and darkness which had lit the forest during the day was replaced with the dull green glow of cancerous moonlight.
The shaman waited until the Chaos Moon hung overhead before he began brewing the potion. His cauldron was fire-blackened, and although the inside was crusted with unnameable remains he made no effort to clean it. Instead he merely slit the throats of the rabbits the herd had brought him and filled it with their blood. Pausing only to swallow a few mouthfuls of meat, he took the fever bark from a sack and started chewing, grinding the material between his teeth and then spitting the pulp and brown juice into the cauldron.
By the time he had finished, the fever bark had sent the first twitching hallucinations beetling through his vision. He ignored them. There were more important things to see tonight.
After the blood and the bark came the mushrooms. They had congealed into a mildewed mass at the bottom of one of his leather pouches.
His nostrils wrinkled at the smell as he scraped them out and dropped them into the cauldron. They bubbled and hissed when they hit the blood, and although there was no fire beneath the ancient iron the contents began to steam.
The shaman chuckled to himself as he caught the smell of his concoction. With the moon so full he knew that it didn’t need to be so potent, but once he got started on a brew he found it difficult to stop.
The mandrake root was the final ingredient. It twisted and squirmed between his fingers like a worm about to be put on a hook. It took all of his dexterity to hold it still enough to slice off the single piece he needed. Ignoring the scream, he dropped it into the cauldron, and tiny tongues of fire started to dance in the steam that rose up from it.
“Messenger,” the shaman said, his muscles straining as he lifted the bubbling cauldron towards the beast. “Here. Drink. Drink deeply.”
The messenger moaned as he caught the smell of the concoction. There was no mistaking the terror on his twisted features, or the fact that he recognised the smell. But although he shied away he soon came back, drawn to the concoction as irresistibly as a suicide towards the edge of a cliff.
He bent his forelegs and leaned forwards, gripping the sides of the cauldron and drinking deeply. Although a chorus of strangled noises came from his throat he continued to guzzle the foul brew until the cauldron was empty. Then, with a belch that shimmered with green flame, he collapsed sideways onto the forest floor. There his great body twitched and spasmed, rolling and bouncing as muscles loosened and contracted. His six limbs thrashed through the detritus like those of some horrible insect, and noises started to emerge from the frothing lips. As yet the broken shards of sound were incomprehensible.
“Now,” the shaman growled, beckoning to the herd who lurked amongst the trees. “Draw closer and listen to the voice of your lord.”
The beasts did so, ears twitching uncertainly and tails curled up in fear. They had seen enough of the shaman’s work to regard it with suspicion, and already something seemed to be happening.
As the messenger’s dreadful fit subsided his vocal cords unfroze and a voice emerged from his body. It was the voice of Gulkroth, and at the sound of it even the strongest of the herd felt their bladders loosen.
“The humans are defiling our land,” the voice said, and each word seemed to be whispered directly into the ears of those who listened. “They tear down our holy places with foul blackpowder, and shatter the herdstones that lie within.”
The herd growled, echoing the rage they heard in their leader’s voice.
“The stink of their meddling pollutes the world, but the time when they can hide behind it has gone. When the Chaos Moon waxes full and wrathful, then we will march to their greatest city. There we will fall up
on them, and there we will annihilate them.”
The herd roared its approval, and it seemed that at the words the moon above flickered brighter, bathing them in the promise of the victory to come.
“Come to the gathering of the Great Herd. Come with me to victory.”
And to victory it would be, there was none who had any doubt of that. Even as the shaman collected his noisome possessions the first of the herd had already made off, racing through the night in their eagerness to reach the gathering of the great herd.
In the morning the messenger awoke with a burning stomach and a mouth as dry as ash. He staggered to his feet and found a stream to drink at. After slaking his thirst he sniffed at the air.
The pain in his head had faded to a dull throb, but he knew that the relief wouldn’t last for long. The words which pounded within his skull still beat as insistently as ever. Soon they would begin hitting the inside of his skull with iron fists, demanding release.
With a shudder the messenger squinted up at the sun, took a deep sniff of air and bounded away in search of the next herd. He had a message to spread and, as sure as dandelions seeds float in the breeze, he was going to spread it.
“Hofstadter.” Sergeant Alter’s voice rang out above the hubbub of a company preparing to march. “Get out of your blankets, you lazy devil. We’ve got a full day’s march ahead of us if we want to reach Hergig by nightfall.”
Before he realised what he was doing Hofstadter snarled beneath his blankets. Luckily the noise around him was loud enough to drown out the defiant sound, and he pulled back his frayed blankets and peered out at the world.
It looked sort of… strange. His comrades didn’t seem to have any expressions on their flat faces. Neither did the women and children who walked amongst them, although they did look delicious.
Hofstadter found that he was drooling, and stopped himself. It must be the fever that was making him think this way. It made it difficult to think of anything apart from how much his bones hurt and how hungry he was.
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