01 - Valnir’s Bane

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  Ulf was shaking his head in dismay. “Shocking. A child could have built a sturdier bridge. Look.” He poked a thick finger at the ropes that held the logs together. “They have used the poorest quality rope. It has loosened and rotted in the damp. Why a few strokes with a knife here and there and the whole structure would…” He trailed off, his eyes glazing over.

  “Not on your life, you madman,” said Reiner, catching on.

  “But we must!” whispered Ulf, suddenly alive with urgency. “We must! We can stop them in their tracks. More than half of their force would be trapped behind the river. The cannon as well. It would take them days, maybe weeks to rebuild it.”

  “What’s this now?” asked Hals. “What does he mean to do?”

  “He wants to knock down the bridge,” said Reiner. “With us on it.” He shook his head at Ulf. “You’ll kill us all.”

  “I won’t!” said Ulf. There was a catch of desperate hope in his voice. “If I loosen it just enough, I can tie a rope to a key support and pull it out once we are all clear.”

  “And if you loosen it too much, it all falls on our heads before you get a chance,” countered Reiner.

  Ulf clenched his fists, controlling his temper. “Captain, I am an engineer. This is what I know. Will you not trust me in my field as I have trusted you in yours?”

  “I do trust you, as an engineer. My fear is that you are allowing your eagerness to stop the Kurgan to drown your engineering knowledge in wishful dreams.”

  They all looked up as they became aware that there was silence above them. No troops were crossing the bridge.

  “Have they all gone?” asked Franka.

  “They can’t have,” said Hals.

  The silence ended with a fresh roaring and cracking of whips, followed after a long moment by a creaking of wood, a groaning of slaves, and a grinding of iron on stone.

  “The cannon,” said Pavel. “They’re moving the cannon.”

  Ulf turned to Reiner, eyes pleading. “Captain, this is an opportunity not to be missed. If we can drop the cannon in the river, we will not only slow them, we will… castrate them! They will be half the threat they are now. They may even give up and go home.”

  Reiner bit his lip. They didn’t have long to act. “All right,” he said at last. “What do we need to do?”

  Ulf grinned, and began tying what was left of their rope to the support closest to the wall. “Hals and Oskar. You will tie yourselves to this rope and wait here. The rest of us will spread out along this side of the bridge and cut the ropes that join the supports together. Once you unwind the rope, bring it here and tie one end to this pillar, the other around your waist. We do not want to leap into the river untethered, but if the bridge begins to go, jump, tethered or not. You understand me?”

  “I understand yer a madman, and yer going to kill us all,” said Hals, but began to tie the rope around his waist.

  Reiner, Ulf, Franka, Pavel and Giano started working their way quickly back through the timbers. The cannon was rolling closer. There wasn’t much time. Reiner braced himself in a V and began sawing at a knotted mass of rope that lashed two logs together. For all of Ulf’s talk of rotten rope, the fibres were tough and fought his blade. He longed to chop at them, but didn’t want to risk the noise. To his left Franka was cutting feverishly. Giano was on his right, cursing under his breath as he worked and looking up constantly.

  The cannon was picking up speed, and despite being wet and half frozen, Reiner started to sweat. There was a good chance the great gun would bring the bridge down without their help. Visions of being pinned to the river bottom flashed before his eyes.

  Shouts of alarm came from above and the bridge shook with a jarring impact. Reiner clung to the supports as they shivered and swayed. He held his breath. Amazingly, the bridge remained intact. He exhaled. He could hear the Kurgan screaming and a fresh flurry of whip cracking. It sounded as if the slaves had steered the cannon into one of the railings.

  A reprieve. Reiner began cutting again as the slaves moaned out a weary chant and began pulling the cannon back for another try. At last he parted the heavy hemp and started unwinding it, reaching around the trunk again and again like a tailor measuring the waist of a fat priest.

  He had the binding unwound and had sawn halfway through the fixed end when the cannon rumbled forward again, and this time the slaves’ aim was true. The heavy, iron-shod wheels boomed onto the wooden planks and the entire bridge groaned in pain. Reiner could feel the timbers compressing and shifting around him.

  When the bridge didn’t collapse immediately, he returned to cutting. Franka spidered past him, a coil of rope over one shoulder. Giano was nearly finished as well. They’d done it!

  A sudden cry and a splash from the far end of the bridge snapped Reiner’s head around. Pavel was clinging to a support beam, his legs dangling over the water. A length of tree trunk was bobbing away down the river, followed by a tangle of rope.

  “Sigmar’s balls!” cursed Reiner, glancing up fearfully. Had the Chaos troops heard? He chopped through the last few strands of his rope, slung it over his shoulder, and monkeyed toward Pavel as fast as he could. The pikeman’s hands were slipping as he tried to get purchase on the slimy log.

  A harsh voice barked down from above. Reiner looked up, and locked eyes with a Kurgan overseer, his helmet glinting in the torchlight. For a moment, both of them froze, then the overseer disappeared and Reiner heard him shouting a warning. The cannon stopped.

  “Ulf!” Reiner cried as he reached Pavel. “We have been discovered! Rope off and into the water.”

  “But I must still remove the centre joist!” came Ulf’s reply.

  “It’s too late!” Reiner braced himself, grabbed Pavel’s arm and pulled.

  “Shouldn’t we just drop in?” the pikeman asked as he struggled to get on top of the log.

  “Without tying off?” asked Reiner. “We’d never stop.”

  Pavel was fortunately wiry and light. With Reiner’s help he got a fresh grip on the log and swung his legs up to brace against another. “Sorry, captain,” he said as he scrambled to his feet. “It fell away as I stepped on it.”

  “Forget it. Just move. We need to tie off by the wall or we’ll miss the landing.”

  But as they turned toward the south bank, Kurgan began climbing over the side of the bridge.

  “Hurry!” said Reiner, drawing his sword.

  As he and Pavel clambered through the beams, the cannon began moving again, but this time it was moving back toward the north side of the bridge. The slaves were pulling it back, out of danger.

  “No!” wailed Ulf. He started forward, maul in hand, ducking recklessly though the supports. “The cannon must fall!”

  “Urquart! Fall back!” Reiner bellowed. “I order you…!”

  A Kurgan dropped on the beam before him, roaring and swinging his axe—and immediately slipped and fell into the rushing water. He disappeared instantly. Reiner laughed, but a second, a hulking heathen with a flaming red beard, was more cautious, bracing with one hand while menacing Reiner with his sword. More were climbing down behind him.

  “We’ll never get through that lot,” said Pavel.

  Reiner pulled the coiled rope off his shoulder and handed it back to the pikeman, his eyes never leaving the advancing Kurgan. “Tie off. We’ll go together.”

  Pavel hesitated. “But did you not say…”

  “We’ll have to risk it. It may be death, but it’s not certain death.”

  The red bearded Kurgan lashed out. Reiner ducked and the heavy sword bit into a support trunk. Reiner had a clear shot. He thrust at the man’s chest, but his sword glanced off the norther’s mail shirt.

  Reiner retreated back behind the pillar as red beard’s blade splintered it again. Behind the giant another Kurgan screamed and tumbled into the water. The others turned. Ulf was behind them, wading into them, maul swinging. Reiner gasped, amazed at the big man’s agility on the treacherous framework. He seemed more at ho
me there than on solid ground. All those years clambering up and down scaffolding, building fortifications, Reiner decided.

  For a foolish moment, as another Kurgan fell victim to Ulf’s maul, Reiner thought the engineer might win, but more and more Kurgan were climbing over the rail. There was an endless supply of them. The battle could not be won.

  “Tied off, captain,” said Pavel, behind him.

  “Tie my waist.” Reiner dodged another cautious blow from red beard and backed up. He felt Pavel’s hands go around his waist. “Ulf!” he bellowed. “Fall back! Abandon the bridge!”

  “No!” shouted the engineer. “I must strike just one blow!” He dodged back from two Kurgan, then slipped around the far side of a pillar, ending up behind them. “Jump!” he called. “Everyone jump! I will join you.”

  Red-beard leapt forward and lunged at Reiner. Reiner jumped back desperately and evaded the blade by a finger’s-width, but lost his balance. His feet flew out from under him and he fell backward. He had a brief flash of Pavel flailing, and then icy black water closed over him. The current yanked him down river like a giant hand.

  The answer to whether Pavel had finished tying him off came almost immediately. He jerked to a brutal stop, the thin rope biting painfully into his waist. Something slammed into his left side. Pavel. The current stretched them out in the water like men side by side on a rack. The cold was unbearable. Reiner fought to bring his arms down and grab the rope. He tried to raise his head out of the river. The water split at his chin like the prow of a ship. It filled his mouth.

  Reiner at last caught the rope. He pulled, and rose a little from the water. He sucked air. Pavel was struggling to do the same at his side. Reiner let go with one hand and grabbed him behind the neck. He nearly fell back again for this kindness, but Pavel at last found the rope and they both got their shoulders above the waves, though the strain was considerable.

  To his right, Reiner could see that Oskar, Franka, Hals and Giano were in the water as well, all together in a knot at the end of their ropes. They were tantalisingly close to the landing and were straining to reach it. A Kurgan splashed by between them, trying to swim, and Reiner looked back at the bridge.

  The cannon had nearly reached the north bank again, with slaves pushing and pulling at it fore and aft. Below them, Ulf was swinging at a support post in the centre of the bridge as Kurgan climbed toward him from all directions. He struck a mighty blow that Reiner heard above even the noise of the water, but the post remained in place. He swung again, but a Kurgan leapt at him and spoiled his aim. Then they were all around him, slashing and thrusting. Ulf took a cut in the shoulder, another in the leg. He roared and swung in a circle, knocking three Kurgan into the drink. Five took their place.

  Pavel began pulling at the rope, trying to climb toward the bridge, against the current. “Curse the lummox!” he cried. “Pull, captain! We have to help him!”

  “Ulf!” screamed Reiner. “Jump, you fool.”

  Ulf laid about him like Sigmar-in-the-pass and amazingly, for a moment, the Kurgan fell back before him, uncertain on the precarious struts. With a desperate, all or nothing swing, Ulf bashed the post again, a terrific smash that jarred it loose at last. It spun out of place and bounced down through the joists and beams to splash into the water.

  The Kurgan under the bridge froze, looking around uneasily. At first it seemed that nothing would happen, then the bridge groaned like a dyspeptic giant. Another post fell out of place and dropped into the river, then another.

  With a roar of rage, one of the Kurgan leapt at Ulf, bringing his sword down like a headsman’s axe. Reiner watched in horror as the stroke chopped down through the engineer’s collarbone all the way to his heart, causing an eruption of blood.

  Ulf was dead, but it seemed that, by slaying him, the Kurgan had slain the bridge as well, for as Ulf fell, so did the span, twisting and collapsing with a slow grace.

  “The damned fool,” said Reiner, swallowing hard. “I told him…”

  The bridge sagged first in the centre, and then disintegrated all along its length. On the north side the overseers were screeching at the cannon slaves to pull faster, but the great gun was still on the planks, and began rolling back down the swiftly steepening incline, dragging slaves and Chaos marauders with it, until at last its weight proved too much for the remaining supports, and it crashed through into the drooping understructure. The cannon crashed Ulf and the Kurgan warriors and took them and the bridge with it as it plunged into the river with an enormous splash.

  A huge swell of water rose and began rolling down the river as the cannon’s daemon mouth sank below the waves like some sea monster in its death throes. Reiner felt the tension on the rope around his waist slacken as the bridge became free-floating debris, all of which was heading their way.

  “Brace yourself!” Reiner cried to Pavel, and risked a glance toward Hals, Franka, Oskar and Giano. They were just pulling themselves onto the landing. Franka lay gasping on the flagstones. Giano was trying desperately to get a leg up. Then the wave hit, covering the landing in a waist deep blanket of water. As he was lifted and tossed about on the swell, Reiner saw Franka and Giano swept off the landing and back into the river with Oskar and Hals as if by a broom.

  Their only piece of fortune—if it could be called that—was that the wave pushed the four toward Reiner and Pavel; almost drove them into them in fact. Reiner had to raise his hands to fend off Oskar’s knees as he whirled past him.

  “Catch them!” Reiner called to Pavel. “Hold ’em fast!”

  He and Pavel grabbed at the spinning mass of limbs and torsos. Through the splash and foam, Reiner locked eyes with Franka. He grabbed her arm and pulled her close. Pavel had Hals by the collar.

  “At least,” choked Giano, spitting water, “we all die together, eh?”

  “Watch out!” shouted Franka.

  Reiner looked back, and almost had his head caved in by a huge log rising and turning on the swell. He kicked it away and another struck him in the back. The remains of the bridge were bounding past them, tumbling and knocking together with great hollow thuds, ropes like spiderwebs tangling them together.

  A rope caught Oskar across the chest, jerking him forward, which in turn dragged his companions. Hals pulled the rope up and over Oskar’s head. The artilleryman was barely conscious. Hals and Pavel tried to hold him out of the water, but they were sinking as well.

  Reiner caught a rope-draped log and clung to it. “Climb on! All of you.”

  The light, which had been dimming quickly as they sped away from the Kurgan’s torches, went out entirely as the river took them around a bend. Reiner pulled Franka to the log by feel and she threw an arm over it. Reiner heard the others doing the same as the current swept them further into the darkness at a terrifying speed.

  SIXTEEN

  Fellows Of The Brand

  They clung silently to the log as it hurtled through the deafening black, the sound of their gasping breaths lost in the rushing roar of the river. All of them were too cold, too battered and too frightened to speak. There was no room in Reiner’s head for wondering what might happen next, for making plans. He was a rat, clutching at flotsam, trying to keep his head above water, fighting for one more breath, all higher thoughts gone, surrendered to the unconquerable animal instinct to hold on to life while there was yet strength in his limbs.

  Other pieces of debris glanced off them, causing fresh cries of pain and fear, and they careered bruisingly into the walls as the river whipped them around corners, each time making Reiner think that they had crashed into the invisible obstacle that would at last break their bodies and crack their skulls.

  His brain was so numb that he failed to wonder what the steadily growing roaring in his ears might mean until he and the log and his companions flew helter skelter down smooth, stairstepped rapids and plunged into a roiling boil of leaping water.

  After a frightening liquid battering, the log resurfaced and Reiner found that they were floating
in relatively calm water. When he had caught his breath, he raised his voice. “Are we all here?”

  “Aye, captain,” said Pavel.

  “Here!” said Franka.

  “And where might here be?” grumbled Hals.

  “We are swallowed by the dragon,” said Oskar. “He will use us as fuel for his fire.”

  “Shut you mouth, crazy man,” said Giano angrily.

  From the echoes they seemed to be in a large cavern. There was still a current, pulling them insistently along, but there were no waves. A hollow knocking—almost musical—came from their left. It sounded to Reiner like enormous wooden wind chimes banging together.

  Reiner had been in the cold water for so long he hardly felt it anymore, but he had a dangerous urge to sleep, to let go of the log and drift away. He shook himself.

  “I don’t suppose anyone’s tinder is dry enough to…” He paused as the roar of the rapids, which had been growing gradually quieter, got louder once again. “Are we coming to a second set of rapids?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Franka, her teeth chattering. “For the other sound is still to our left.”

  The rapids roared in their ears and they were splashed with spray, then after a moment the rumble once again diminished, while the wood-on-wood sound remained a constant.

  “We are travelling in a circle,” said Reiner, his stomach sinking. “We are caught in a vortex, a whirlpool.”

  There was a short silence as this sunk in, then Pavel spoke.

  “So what’s to be done? What d’we do?”

  “Do?” Reiner laughed mirthlessly. “My dear pikeman, we are doing it.”

  “But captain,” said Hals uneasily. “You must have a plan. Y’haven’t failed us yet.”