Maintaining his concentration was hard, what with the other looking on and dogging his every step.
“Leave me be,” he hissed. A side glance revealed his plea had gone unheeded. “Plague me no more!” he said louder, prompting an angry look from Volker who he was paired with. Even Dog looked annoyed, but then that little bastard always did.
Keller allowed himself a smirk, the first for some time—Volker loved that mutt more than he did his own family. Back in Mannsgard, he’d seen the beast lick the huntsman’s feet. Volker slept in his boots. He was not one to take them off regularly. Keller assumed the affection between mutt and man was probably mutual.
The sliver of his old self passed, like a flash of sun on metal, as the other reasserted its presence again. Still no sign of the assassin. The two men carried on.
Lenkmann stumbled and cursed through his teeth. He’d jarred his ankle. It was painful as he felt down at it, but he could still move well enough. The sun was high now, and he had to squint when he looked up. Morning was nearly done. Brand was leaving him behind, hurrying through the hills like a wolf hunting deer, or maybe another wolf.
There was something of the bloodhound in the man, so driven to find the assassin was he. Lenkmann noticed he’d left his pistol unloaded. Brand wanted to face his adversary up close, push steel into his flesh, so the assassin knew who had killed him, who was his better. It was as if need compelled him. Lenkmann had seen Brand in battle before, the man was frightening, but this was different. This was a whole other side to him. And as he struggled to catch Brand, so intent on his prey, so utterly possessed with scarcely restrained violence, Lenkmann thought this was the truest side of the man. Brand had been a mystery until then. Now Lenkmann saw him for what he really was and it scared him more than the wyvern.
A green ocean stretched before them and the hills were its waves, and the rocks its shore. Here they trawled for a single fish, one with hollow eyes, black and lifeless as a doll’s. Karlich felt those eyes upon him. Ever since entering the hills, he’d not been able to shake the feeling of being watched. Paranoia was becoming an unwelcome bedfellow for the sergeant.
The sun was rising and though it warmed his face, it also sent the shadows fleeing into the deeper crevices of the land, filling them with darkness. Karlich began to imagine enemies lurking there: a masked assassin, wraith-like and undefeatable; Vanhans the witch hunter, armed with murderer’s noose and a traitor’s brand.
Karlich gasped when he felt Rechts’ hand on his arm.
“Sergeant, you all right?”
He found his composure quickly, hiding his surprise behind annoyance.
“Fine! Never mind me, Rechts. Keep your eyes on the hills. He’s here, I can feel it.”
They forged off together in silence.
Karlich was annoyed at himself for allowing his mind to wander. If the assassin had been watching then he would have loosed an arrow or shot in the sergeant’s back and ended him then and there.
Idiot!
He didn’t mean to take his anger out on Rechts, either. At least the drummer was sober and alert. It was more than could be said for him. Rechts needed watching closely. If nothing else, he needed keeping apart from Masbrecht. He’d developed a passive loathing for the man, taking umbrage at his piety. Karlich had no desire to see that become more than angry words. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what Rechts was capable of. He knew something of the man’s past. He’d spoken of it once after their first battle together. Rechts wasn’t a drummer back then and Karlich only just a sergeant. The Reikland border was under attack by beastmen out of the Reikwald. It had been a tough fight and many good men had not seen the sunrise. Perhaps being faced with mortality, so close and immediate it could be felt as a shiver in the bones, Rechts had decided to talk of his troubles. It had just been the two of them, huddled over mugs of strong spirits in a booth in some tavern, the name of which Karlich could no longer remember.
Through slurred whispers, Rechts had told of the day a mutant was discovered in his village. A boy back then, he’d been fishing in a stream nearby his village when a girl had cried out. A sullen child, who kept to himself, was being bullied by the edge of the stream. He scuffled with his attackers: a blacksmith’s son, his head full of soot, and a farrier’s lad who’d been hit on the head with too many horseshoes. There was low cunning in these boys, who pulled at the sullen child’s clothes, intent on first stripping him then dumping him naked into the stream. They’d succeeded in removing his boots and leggings when the girl, skimming stones on the bank, had noticed something terrible. The sullen child had fleshy webs between his toes and a small tail of bone protruded from the base of his spine.
Cries of “Mutant! Unclean!” echoed across the stream and down to the village. Men with hooks and staves came running with the local priest in tow.
The sullen boy was crying, tugging on his leggings and reaching for his boots when the village men seized him at the priest’s orders. So disturbed was he by what he’d seen, the old cleric sent messengers to the nearest town and the chapter house of the Order of Sigmar there.
Everything changed when the witch hunters arrived. Their leader was a brutal man on a crusade that was anything but righteous. Rechts never saw the sullen boy again, but he knew what happened to him. The “purging” didn’t end there. In a fit of pious rage, the witch hunter declared the entire village spoiled by Chaos. He found signs of taint where there were none and condemned innocents to the pyre and noose. When some of the villagers resisted, it only enflamed him further. Rechts’ mother could see to the end of what was happening. She took her son away from the village square where a mob was baying for blood, little realising that soon their own flesh would crispen on the pyre.
For the witch hunters brought men with them, hard men who served the order in a grim, unspoken role. At the points of their swords, they herded the villagers one-by-one into the flames. Only the priest was spared, baying for blood and retribution, transformed by fear into a madman. From his hiding place under the floorboards of his house, Rechts could hear their screams. He covered his ears against the terrible noise and screwed his eyes shut. By the time he opened them again, the village was quiet. Smoke and the smell of cooked meat lingered on the air. The stench aroused no hunger in him; he retched and fetched up an empty stomach in the street. Rechts emerged to find his village was gone, just a burnt out skeleton of wood and scorched stone. Piles of ash and charred bones were all that remained of his kith and kin. Though he searched on his knees, tears streaking his soot-stained face, he never found his mother amongst the remains. A part of him hoped she had escaped, but knew deep down that his fingers might have brushed the ash of what she had become in the pyre’s flame.
Desolated and alone, Rechts had wandered down the road leading from his village wishing for death. Against the odds, he reached Grünburg and lived on the streets until he was old enough to take a piece of silver and join the Emperor’s armies.
Even as a boy, Rechts had been a survivor. It was no different when he became a soldier but he bore the mark of that day in the village deeper than any physical scar. He never trusted priests again and hated witch hunters with a passion. In that, he and Karlich had an accord. Karlich had listened to the tale quietly and consoled him at the end. It was like talking to stone for all the emotion Rechts had shown him. Neither man could have known that Karlich would meet that self same witch hunter many years later, and that the zealot would not live to torture another innocent. The man was gone, but his legacy remained, and like a shadow creeping over the face of a setting sun, it was getting closer to Karlich.
A flash of light caught Karlich’s attention. Something glinted in the morning sun.
Metal?
He followed a second flash south-east and what he saw turned his blood cold.
Prince Wilhelm and his knights were on the road and heading towards them. Still several miles distant, there could be no mistaking the Griffonkorps banner and the troop of armoured men on horseback.
Karlich surveyed the hills quickly out of instinct, as if the murderer would present himself now the moment drew near, but he saw nothing. Just rocks and rugged earth, patches of gorse and bracken, a hundred places where the shadows could hide Wilhelm’s would-be slayer.
The flash of light came again. Soon it would be a flash of blackpowder and a prince’s blood would be sullied on the ground.
Eber squinted and scowled. He rubbed at his eyes as he was momentarily blinded by something shining into them. Shielding the sun overhead with one meaty hand, he tried to blink away the after flare but it came again. He tried to follow its origin. Too late he saw the mirror being used to blind him. Too late he realised the blurry shadow figure was coming for him. Eber heard Masbrecht cry out a warning. The burly Reiklander wasn’t fast enough as he brought his shortsword up to guard.
“Fat pig, you’re so slow!” said his father’s voice, echoing in his head from beyond the grave.
Then he felt the knife enter his body. The first few stabs were hot and sharp, but the ones that followed grew cold and numb. Even Eber with all his strength couldn’t stop the blood flowing from his body. As when his father used to beat him, his arms fell to his sides, his head went down to his boots and he could do nothing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AN UNEXPECTED MURDERER
Averland plains,
413 miles from Altdorf
The first moment Karlich knew something was wrong, Masbrecht was shouting.
“Eber’s dead! He killed him! He’s here!”
That couldn’t be right. He’d seen Eber but a half hour ago, he was fine. A strong ox of a man was Eber. No, he couldn’t be dead. There must be a mistake.
Then came the running, Karlich and Rechts together, Karlich’s legs working in advance of his mind, his fingers tugging the pistol from his belt before his brain had told them to.
Eber was dead. The assassin had killed him.
A sound like thunder echoed throughout the hills, the natural depression within the valley rebounding and intensifying it so it was loud and difficult to pinpoint. A rock just above Karlich’s head exploded a half-second later.
Karlich cried out as stony shrapnel embedded in his cheek like hot needles. He went down behind some scattered boulders lodged in the hillside—so did Rechts—and not from the injury. The next shot could be his skull instead of a rock.
“Grimblades!” he roared, trying to staunch the blood flooding down his face and neck, spilling through his fingers and soaking his shoulder. Karlich searched the hills. His head was down but he saw his men moving through the gaps in the rocks. The sun was in his eye-line, partially blinding him.
The bastard had been waiting all along, waiting for the perfect moment.
Grimacing with the pain in his cheek, Karlich cursed and stepped out from behind the boulders. He had to join the hunt. He just hoped the assassin had switched aim or the next iron ball would indeed be in his head.
Brand kept his anger like a caged thing, deep inside him. Now it was threatening to spill over, so annoyed was he about being on the wrong side of the hills. He bolted like a maniac across the road, leaving Lenkmann behind. Intent to the point of recklessness, he powered up the opposite hillside in long, rangy strides. He met Eber a short distance up, ashen-faced and lying on his side in a pool of his own blood. The red rivulets coming from his body were like thick veins threading the grass. Brand barely glanced down as he raced past him.
Masbrecht was knelt beside him. “I didn’t see, I didn’t see…”
Brand wasn’t listening.
Not far now.
He ran harder.
* * *
Volker drew his pistol when he saw Eber go down. It was so quick. A snatch of movement, the fading memory of a lithe figure in dark-brown and green felling an oak in the time it should take to cut down a sapling. Then the assassin was gone and Volker lowered his pistol with a curse.
“He’s here. Come on!” he urged Keller, who looked like his wits had deserted him.
“Get away! Get out of my head!” he murmured, staggering after Volker and Dog. The mutt was barking loudly, drawing the others to the fight.
“Good boy, good boy,” said Volker, bounding across the hillside, his words coming out in a breathless rush. He ducked through tight ravines, hooked around boulders, leapt over mounds of earth. Just the flicker of his enemy, the waft of something incongruous on the breeze, kept him on the assassin’s tail.
As a huntsman on his native lands, during all the years he’d been in the Reikland army, Volker had never tracked a prey so elusive. The assassin left foils and false signs everywhere he went. He had just seconds to do it, and Volker had even less time to decipher them. He went on a winding path, first down and then up again, across the length and breadth of the hillside.
Volker lost concentration for a split-second when he saw Brand barrelling up to meet him. In the corner of his eye, he noticed Karlich and Rechts too. In that moment, he lost his prey. Volker paused, annoyed at himself and felt a slight shift in the air nearby. Ducking out of instinct, he heard something whip over his head that ended in a dissonant clang against the rocks beside him. Volker was swinging the pistol around when he saw the assassin. Lithe and tall, he wore a tight leather bodice tied off down the middle. Their leggings and boots were of a dark animal hide. No skin was visible, hidden as it was behind long sleeves, gloves and a mask to cover the face. Something flashed between the eye-slits. It looked like enjoyment. The assassin had blades up his arms, daggers at his belt, a short sword down one leg and some kind of rifle, like no harquebus Volker had ever seen, on a strap slung over his shoulder.
The huntsman’s skill at observation had always been keen, and all this he discerned in the moment it took for the assassin to loose another throwing dagger and end Volker’s life.
Fate intervened in the huntsman’s favour, a burly mass of fur and fangs smashing into the assassin and spoiling his aim. The dagger clattered harmlessly to one side and Volker was on his feet a moment later. Dog was fastened to the assassin’s arm, biting down and growling. It elicited a screech of pain from the masked killer, a lot higher in pitch than Volker was expecting. Before he could get there, the assassin threw Dog off. The mastiff rolled and leapt again, but faltered in mid-flight. Volker thought he’d seen the killer raise a hand in warding, a natural reaction to a savage beast coming at him, but as Dog yelped and crumpled to the ground, he suspected something else. Horror built in Volker’s gut, all thought of stopping the assassin momentarily forgotten in his concern for Dog. The mastiff wasn’t moving. Something bubbled from its maw amidst the foaming saliva.
Frantic, Volker searched Dog’s cooling body for sign of injury. Under its chin, he found a tiny dart. So innocuous-looking, yet so deadly. He went to tear it out before realising the barb was poisoned. Dog was dead. There was nothing Volker could do.
Brand got the assassin’s attention simply by running towards her at speed. He redoubled his efforts when he saw the mastiff fall to the dart. Unless the assassin’s attention was elsewhere, she’d gut Volker next while his grief made him defenceless. No such weakness from Brand. He knew her, this killer, because he knew himself.
Karlich and Rechts were coming from below. Even Keller was catching up to where Volker cradled his beast’s lifeless head. The others were not far, either. They were herding her. She knew it. But Brand knew that an animal was deadliest when cornered. He followed her as she raced up the hillside. She was trying to reach higher ground and find an escape route. Perhaps, with Wilhelm closing by the moment, she merely wished to stall her attackers and execute her mission and the prince with a kill shot from the summit of the hill. The rifle she wore on her back looked like it was up to the task.
With Volker incapacitated, Brand easily outstripped the others for pace. Powering up the rugged slope, he had the assassin exactly where he wanted her—to himself.
Weaving around a rocky outcrop, Brand saw the flash of steel just in time. He parried with his blad
e, sparks and metal slivers shearing off in the air like falling stars. The second thrust came just as swiftly and he was forced to deflect low to avoid having a knife in his abdomen. The assassin, surprised her victim had lasted this long, drew a second dagger. Brand stepped back, pulling a throwing knife from his vambrace and using it like a foil. Her attack exploded against him in a rain of blows. High and low thrusts, wide slashes and overhand cuts prodded and probed the Reiklander’s defences, seeking an opening.
She was good, faster than him. Brand knew he couldn’t beat her while she had the upper hand. But all he had to do was hold her off and wait for the others. He’d wanted the assassin for himself, but was pragmatic enough to accept help when he needed it. A flurry of blade strokes pushed Brand back. A hot line of pain seared his arm as she opened up a bloody gash in his wrist. A well-aimed kick punched the air from Brand’s lungs and sent him sprawling down the slope. Winded, but with anger fuelling his body in lieu of air, Brand scrambled back after her.
“Bitch…” he muttered in a rare moment of pique.
Then he saw the rifle levelled almost point blank at his chest and knew he’d made a mistake. Closing his eyes, Brand accepted the inevitable. He heard horses in the distance and men shouting from the valley below. But when the shot rang out, he felt no pain. He didn’t fall with an iron bullet in his heart.
Brand opened his eyes.
She was dead, the left eye-slit of her mask exploded outwards in a bloom of bloodstained leather. Volker was revealed behind her, an empty look on his face, a smoking pistol in his hand.
[Empire Army 04] - Grimblades Page 17