“What?” Hanna began, but subsided as he started to move away. Every instinct for stealthy movement he’d learned in the woods came into play as he wove carefully around guy ropes and tent pegs as easily as if they were the forest undergrowth among which he’d grown up among. “Right, fine, I’ll just sit here and wait to get caught then, shall I?”
Rudi ignored her muttered imprecations, conscious only of the necessity of moving quietly enough to avoid attracting the attention of the guards. As he got closer to the pool of torchlight leaking in from the avenue beyond the line of tents, his heart skipped. He’d been right. Their packs and weapons had been dumped on the ground next to the captain’s tent, no doubt for Gerhard to examine in detail at his leisure. Dropping to the ground, he wormed his way forward, hoping the guards would be keeping their gaze at head height.
To his profound relief, he turned out to be correct. Muttered snatches of conversation drifted to his ears as he reached out for the bundles ahead of him.
“Gone a bit quiet in there, hasn’t it?” The voice sounded young and a little eager. Rudi tensed. If the speaker went inside to investigate they would be caught for sure.
“That’s the idea.” The second voice was older, reminding Rudi somehow of Sergeant Littman of the Kohlstadt militia. “He’s leaving ’em to sweat for a bit. Think about their options.”
“Shouldn’t have thought they’ve got any.”
“Well, no. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” The speaker made a sound of disgust. “Bloody heretics. Dunno why he doesn’t just burn the lot of ’em now and have done with it. I would.”
Rudi reached out carefully, grabbing the shoulder strap of his pack. Absorbed in the new topic of Fritz’s impending execution, neither guard appeared to notice. He pulled it cautiously towards him, sighing with relief as it passed into the shadows. Hanna’s satchel followed just as easily, then the pack Fritz had taken from Theo. Their weapons were more of a problem and he moved as slowly as he dared, fearful of revealing himself by a careless clink of metal against metal, but after a moment he’d retrieved his sword belt and the knife which normally hung from it. Fritz’s spear he left where it was. It was too unwieldy to risk taking.
“Here.” He handed Hanna her satchel, shrugging his own pack into place. The girl shouldered it and held out her hand for Fritz’s belongings too. “I’ll take that. You might need your hands free.” A quick glance down at the sword made her meaning quite clear.
“I hope not.” He led the way to the far end of the canvas crosswalk and looked out cautiously. A double line of tents lined up on either side, like a temporary village street, and the tempo of activity along it seemed to be increasing. Men, and a few women, were busying themselves hauling pails of water and blowing fresh life into smouldering cooking fires. A steady stream of armed soldiers were trotting past on incomprehensible errands. Rudi took a deep breath. “Come on.”
Without waiting to see if she followed, he stepped out from between the tents as though he had every right to be there. His shoulder blades tensed for a moment as he anticipated a shouted challenge, but none of the passers-by took any notice of him at all. A moment later Hanna joined him.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We keep moving.” So long as they looked as if they knew where they were going no one was likely to notice them. He hoped. “And try to find Fritz.”
Hanna nodded. “We’d better be quick,” she said, gesturing to the east. Rudi turned to look, his breath freezing in his throat. The first faint flush of sunrise was beginning to stain the sky. He swallowed hard. There could only be moments left before the execution and he had no idea how he was going to find their companion.
“We’ll try this way,” he decided, turning left at the end of the row of tents. Fritz had been dragged off in roughly that direction and if the ground hadn’t been trampled too much there just might be some tracks left he could read. Even as the thought came to him, he realised just how slim a chance that was.
“What’s that?” Hanna asked. A horn blared in the distance, harsh and urgent, and over it rose the sound of raised voices and the clash of steel. Sharp reports, like the sound of twigs snapping in a bonfire, echoed among the tents. All around them, people started running, the soldiers carrying their weapons with an air of grim determination.
“Run!” An overweight man in a cook’s apron barged past them, moving against the tide of soldiers. “The beastmen are attacking the camp!”
CHAPTER THREE
“What?” Rudi tried to grab the man’s arm, hoping to detain him for long enough to get a little more information, but by the time he recovered his wits the fellow had already gone, vanishing into the milling crowd which squawked and flapped its panic like a flock of startled chickens.
“Clear the way!” A troop of soldiers ran past, almost trampling him in their hurry. Hanna pulled him to the side of the thoroughfare just in time. The sound of combat was louder in that direction, the roars and squeals he remembered from the night in the forest rising above the clash of arms and the hoarser shouts of the human commanders.
“What do we do now?” Hanna asked, glancing around as though she expected to see a shaggy misshapen giant bearing down on them at any moment.
“We find Fritz and get out of here,” Rudi replied. The sudden raid seemed almost like a miracle, and for a moment he wondered if Hanna had prayed at the tainted shrine in her cottage too, unwittingly invoking the deity the beastmen seemed to follow. He dismissed the thought angrily. Greta Reifenstahl had been the innocent victim of Gerhard’s paranoia, nothing more and Hanna’s soul had been no more corrupted by Chaos than his own. He’d heard enough of Sergeant Littman’s campaign stories back in Kohlstadt to know that dawn was a particularly good time to attack an enemy. The beastmen’s arrival was a fortuitous coincidence, that was all.
“And where do you suggest we look?” Hanna asked, the habitual edge of asperity creeping back into her voice. Once Rudi would have resented it, but since getting to know her better he was beginning to realise it was just a mask for her own insecurities. And Sigmar knew she had enough to be worried about at the moment. She gestured to the scene of confusion surrounding them.
“This way.” He began jogging in the wake of the soldiers, moving against the stream of non-combatants trying to get as far away from the fighting as they could. As the faint grey light of daybreak began to pierce the shadows around him, he started to feel more certain of the layout of the camp. They’d come in on the western side, and the slope of the ground had almost levelled off in the direction they were moving in. The reddish stain of sunrise was to his right, which meant they were moving north, and assuming the hilltop was roughly circular the centre of the camp must be right about here.
“Fritz!” Hanna sprinted past him, heedless of the danger of attracting unwanted attention, although under the circumstances Rudi supposed the risk was minimal. His guess had been right. A large clear space had been left between the tents, for all the world like a glade in a canvas forest, presumably for the troops to drill in. A thick wooden stake had been driven into the ground in the centre of it, surrounded by brushwood. Fritz stood against it, his posture slumped, held upright only by the thick ropes wound about his body. “Shallya’s mercy, what have they done to him?”
“Kicked the dreck out of me,” Fritz said, his voice slurred. His face was bruised and bloody, and each breath clearly hurt. He raised his head, an expression of puzzlement crossing his features. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your skin,” Rudi said, drawing the knife from his belt and beginning to hack at the ropes. A small part of him was as confused as the simpleton he was rescuing. He didn’t like Fritz, he never had, and it would certainly have been a lot easier to get away if they hadn’t wasted time looking for him. On the other hand, he’d made the youth a promise, and that still meant something. “Where are the guards?”
“Ran off when the fighting started,” Fritz said indistinctly, trying to ra
ise his head. “Lucky that.”
“Chew this.” Hanna rummaged in her satchel, producing a couple of dried leaves, which she slipped between Fritz’s swollen lips. “Not as good as a proper preparation, but it’ll have to do for now.”
“What is it?” Fritz mumbled, but complied anyway.
“Manbane.” She clamped a hand across his face just in time to prevent him spitting them out.
“That’s poison!” Rudi said in horror. “You’ll kill him!”
“Only when it’s refined,” Hanna said impatiently. “Or in a much larger dose than this. All it’ll kill is the pain. Unless you want to carry him.”
“Not particularly,” Rudi said, as the ropes finally parted. Fritz staggered a pace or two forwards, kicking the brushwood aside and pulling free of Hanna’s grip. An expression of surprise worked its way slowly across his face.
“She’s right. I do feel better.” A grin began to form beneath the mask of blood and bruising. “I feel great.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Hanna said. “You’ll feel twice as bad when it wears off.”
“How do we get out of here?” Rudi asked, seizing the hulking youth by the arm. Fritz shrugged, and Rudi tightened his grip. “You were camped here before you deserted, right? You must have some idea of the layout.”
“That way.” Fritz gestured towards the rising sun. “There’s another gate, where the supply wagons come in.”
“Then we can get out the same way,” Rudi said. “Come on.” He turned to lead the way and his blood froze. A familiar black garbed figure was standing on the edge of the open space, backed up by a troop of soldiers. Not everyone in the camp, it seemed, had hurried off to engage the invaders.
“I think this illustrates my earlier point quite nicely,” Gerhard said mildly. “How did you get past the guards?”
“Work it out for yourself.” Rudi edged out in front of his companions, drawing his sword. The gesture would be futile, he knew, the tricks Theo had taught him of no avail against so many trained opponents, but he might just buy the others a little time to get away. The mercenary captain’s advice echoed in his ears. Never go into a fight you don’t know from the outset you’re going to win. Well, it was a little too late for that.
“Kill the simpleton. Take the other two alive.” Gerhard gestured the soldiers forward and Rudi tensed. The rising sun glittered from his outstretched blade, turning it the colour of blood, like some baleful prophecy.
With a roar which seemed to tremble in his bones, something huge and covered with matted hair charged out of the tents behind him, sending canvas crashing to the ground as powerful limbs snagged and snapped the guy lines. A beastman, like the one he’d found dying in a cornfield outside Kohlstadt a few weeks before, sprinted into the open space, a bloodstained cleaver grasped purposefully in its hand. This one, however, was strong and uninjured, radiating malevolence and the desire to kill.
“Shallya protect us!” Hanna gasped, and Rudi remembered that she’d never actually seen one of the mutants before. He turned to face it, prepared to defend her to the best of his ability, but to his relieved astonishment it ignored the little knot of fugitives entirely, charging home against the group of soldiers.
“Bring it down, you idiots!” Gerhard had his sword drawn and lunged at the creature, striking home against its chest. The beastman bellowed, retaliating with a swing of its own weapon, which would surely have taken the witch hunter’s head from his shoulders if he hadn’t ducked with an instant to spare. “The prisoners are escaping!”
The soldiers scattered, trying to get past it, making what strikes and sallies they could with their polearms, but the creature was enraged, flailing wildly with inhuman strength and resilience. A couple of the men went down, blood spraying bright against their gaudy uniforms, but the majority were getting through, running towards Rudi, Hanna and Fritz with grim and unmistakable purpose.
“Come on!” Rudi got his companions moving at last, heading towards the gap in the tents Fritz had indicated, but the stocky youth was moving far too slowly. Weakened by the beating he’d taken, his legs were still too stiff to run properly. The soldiers were going to cut them off for sure.
Abruptly, the knot of men in front of him went down, shrieking, wreathed in flames of a vivid blue colour unlike anything he’d ever seen before. The hairs on the back of Rudi’s neck prickled. Surely Hanna couldn’t have… No, a quick glance behind him was enough to confirm that whatever talisman Gerhard had fused to her flesh was still working. Her expression was one of undisguised shock. But if not her, then who?
“Run, you idiots.” The voice was familiar, a harsh croaking timbre as though the throat producing the words was no longer properly adapted to human speech, and Rudi felt a premonitory tingle down his spine even before the speaker came into view. Hans Katzenjammer? Here? How was that possible?
A moment later, his confusion was swept aside as his old enemy appeared at the head of a swarm of beastmen, who fell on the surviving soldiers with all the bestial ferocity of their kind. A desperate battle began to rage about the fugitives, as reinforcements started to pour into the open space from both factions. Rudi saw men struck down by talon, blade and cudgel, while shaggy beastmen were hacked apart in their turn, or bloody craters erupted through their flesh as firearms barked, blanketing the scene in thick, choking smoke.
Hans flung the body of a soldier aside and turned back to regard Rudi with an expression of amused disdain. His three eyes blinked in unison.
“Getting to be a bit of a habit, isn’t it? Saving your life.” He blocked a cut from Gerhard’s sword with the bony ridge along the edge of his forearm. Since Rudi had seen him last, in the forest near Kohlstadt the fateful night he’d run for his life, the bone had thickened and extended, developing a sharp cutting edge. He swiped back with it, tearing the witch hunter’s cloak and provoking a parry in return. “Don’t make it a wasted effort.”
“Hans?” Fritz goggled at the creature which used to be his brother. “Is that really you?”
“More or less.” The mutant laughed, revelling in the combat, moving easily to keep his body between the witch hunter and the fugitives. “I see you haven’t changed at all.”
“Come on!” Hanna urged the simpleton into motion. “While we still can!”
“Good advice.” Hans punched Gerhard in the stomach and snapped a knee up into the witch hunter’s descending face. Gerhard went limp and the mutant clamped a hand around his throat, lifting him to eye level. It was only then that Rudi realised he’d grown a couple of feet as well and now towered over him.
“Kill him! Kill him!” Hanna shouted suddenly. “He murdered your mother too!” The expression of malevolent loathing was back on her face and Rudi shuddered at the intensity of it.
Hans shook his head regretfully. “I wish I could,” he said. “But she won’t let me. Not yet.” Then he shrugged and threw the barely conscious witch hunter to the ground.
“Who won’t?” Rudi asked. Hans looked up towards the edge of the open space, where a caped, cowled figure stood impassively. For a moment, he wondered how Hanna had got all the way over there so quickly, then realised she was still standing by his shoulder. Besides, the figure’s cape was a different colour, and although he couldn’t quite distinguish the hue, it seemed to shift and change as he looked at it. Whoever it was, her face was in shadow, and the memory came back to him of the horned woman he’d seen with Hans and the leader of the beastman herd. Could this be her? Had she cast the spell which had killed the soldiers standing between them and safety? A moment later, there was no more time to think about it. The mysterious woman shimmered into the shadows and was gone. “Who is she?”
“Look after my brother. He doesn’t understand much about the world.” Hans whirled and was gone, loping after the horned woman, if it had even been her, with a swiftness and grace which belied his monstrous appearance.
“Move!” Rudi said, forcing his confusion to the back of his mind. The skirmish was begi
nning to peter out, fresh troops appearing from all directions to engage the beastmen. If they stayed where they were they were liable to be cut to pieces by either side. He began running in the direction Fritz had indicated, trying not to look at the charred corpses of the soldiers Gerhard had ordered to arrest them. No one else seemed to have heard his orders, and while he remained unconscious the news of their escape wouldn’t travel far.
Rudi glanced back. Fritz was jogging doggedly in his wake, but Hanna had paused beside the slumped body of the witch hunter. With a thrill of horror, he saw her hand move to the hilt of her concealed dagger. If she killed the man now the soldiers surrounding them would notice, he was certain. He drew in his breath to call out something, anything to stay her hand, but to his intense relief she checked the gesture and ran over to join them.
“I thought for a moment you were going to kill him,” he said.
Hanna looked at him with guileless blue eyes. “I was,” she said matter-of-factly. “But now’s not the time. Not while he’s unconscious.” An edge of venom entered her voice which struck Rudi like a winter chill. “When the time comes, I want him to know it was me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Fritz had been right about the other gate. As the fugitives ran through the camp, the sounds of combat diminishing behind them, Rudi began to see boxes and bundles stacked all around, until the tents had been almost entirely displaced by heaps of items he didn’t have the time to stop and identify. Many had been covered with sheets of canvas, leaving only the vague outlines of whatever they concealed, while in other spots barrels and sacks had been carefully stacked. There were hardly any people about, the handful he spotted all civilian camp followers huddled behind whatever concealment they could find, no doubt fearful that the tide of battle would sweep in this direction without warning.
“Over there.” Fritz pointed. A wagon had been drawn across the gap in the embankment, like the one Rudi remembered being poised to block the other gate. It had evidently been done in haste, because the horse drawing it was still between the shafts, whickering nervously at the distant howls of the beastmen. Presumably, the wagon had only just arrived and been pressed into service as a barricade simply because it was the nearest. He said as much and Hanna looked at him quizzically.
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