Forged in Battle

by Justin Hunter - (ebook by Undead)

  When all the men were in the water, Sigmund lowered the firkins of blackpowder and they were strapped onto the top of the planks, well above the water. Last of all he handed Stephan a hooded lantern.

  “Keep that well away from those barrels!” Osric warned “Or we’ll end up in Tilea!”

  The men paddled the raft out of the harbour then caught the current of the midstream water and began to drift downstream.

  Sigmund clung on to the wet wood as he passed the houses of Helmstrumburg. There was black smoke billowing up from the burning houses. Half the new town seemed to be burning. When they were alongside the palisade he saw all the dead bodies that filled the ditches and that were piled up in drifts against the palisade. They had killed so many beastmen, yet there were still so many left.

  Edmunt took over command of the barricades and as the houses burned there was no danger of attack. He went from barricade to barricade assessing the damage. The men saw him and felt heartened: people were already whispering that this was the man who had held Eel Street all alone. They imagined Butcher would be an enormous battle-axe, such as men used in ancient times, and when they saw the simple woodsman’s hatchet they were amazed.

  Edmunt paid no attention to the whispers. He talked to the leader of each free company and took stock of how many fighting men each still commanded, laughed at their stories of bravery or sheer luck, made them feel like heroes, just by having spoken to him.

  As the lull continued a few doors opened and here and there an old woman or child stumbled out into the dead-littered streets. Somehow they had managed to hide from the beastmen and only the approaching flames had finally driven them from their hideouts. They clambered to safety, shaking with terror.

  Edmunt sent a number of his men onto the north wall to spy on the beastmen, then took ten halberdiers and a number of the blacksmiths and went from house to house, hunting any beastmen that had been trapped in the buildings. They came back with nine horned heads that they tossed into a pile in front of the barricade.

  As Edmunt hunted trapped beastmen Gaston walked slowly along the lines of wounded men who were propped up against the walls of Tanner Lane.

  “Well done, Johann!” he told a man he had known before enlisting, who had a bandage around his left ear. “That’s the poorest excuse of a wound I’ve ever seen!”

  “I can’t hear you!” Johann retorted.

  Gaston grinned. The next man was one of Osric’s. He had a stab wound in his leg. A dirty strip of cloth was seeping blood but the man had a tankard in his hand and was happy to be still alive. “You couldn’t face taking orders from that thieving lowlife any longer?”

  “I just couldn’t let your boys keep running away!”

  The next man was slipping in and out of consciousness. A girl was trying to stop the blood from a cut to his head. She saw Gaston and smiled shyly, but Gaston passed on.

  He was too shaken to notice how pretty she was, and it wasn’t until he was three paces along the line that he caught himself and turned back to smile.

  “He looks to be in good hands!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The girl put a hand to her hair, where she used to have ribbons. But she had used all her ribbons as tourniquets on the wounded men.

  “Beatrine,” she said, and blushed.

  Gaston nodded. He put a hand to his moustaches and smoothed them down, feeling a knot. It was only after he had pulled the hair free that he realised that the knot had been a splatter of blood that had scabbed the hairs together.

  “We are lucky to have such pretty nurses,” he said and promised himself that if he came through this day that he would seek this girl out.

  Sigmund and his men clung to the crude raft like survivors from a shipwreck and steered themselves far out into the river stream away from the banks and spying eyes.

  The water lapped against them, and here and there the men could feel long weeds reaching up to tug at their legs.

  “There’s something in the water!” Baltzer hissed.

  Osric reached up and took a knife from the raft, but no one looked reassured. If the forests had hidden all these beastmen for so long, then what might the waters of the Stir hide?

  Sigmund kept his eyes on the land. There was no one he would rather not have on this mission than that cut-throat. His mind started thinking about the things that Theodor had told him. He didn’t believe in river monsters. He was sure that he and his men would reach the land. Who else would fight the beastman leader?

  He laughed silently at himself. Now he was starting to believe the prophecies too.

  As they followed the current of the river the beastman army came into view. They were all lined up the bottom of the hills and there were more scattered through the woods and orchards, well back from the river banks. There were countless creatures grouped in their warbands, their gruesome banners flapping in the breeze.

  The men on the raft went silent. They kept as low as possible, paddled further into the wide waters, wishing that they were not so exposed on the plain water surface. If any of the beastmen thought their raft was anything more than a piece of floating debris then the alarm might be sounded, and their attempt would be little more than suicidal—and Helmstrumburg would be doomed.

  As the flames kept the beastmen back, Edmunt led his men into a huge coaching inn on Altdorf Street, called the Blessed Rest. The bar was empty, but the sound of hooves on floorboards showed that there were beastmen inside, disorientated by the corridors and doorways.

  Edmunt and his men were familiar with this drinking house. Many of them were patrons. They silently crossed the room and took a back staircase to the servants’ rooms in the back. From there they hunted, room by room. They found three beastmen in one room. One of the blacksmiths killed one, while the halberdiers stabbed the other two beastmen. One of them died but the other was only wounded. It shrank back, goat legs curled up to its stomach as it put its hands up to its horned head, and opened its mouth in something approaching a nervous smile of sharp teeth.

  Butcher hit it full in the forehead and the strange expression froze on its face. Edmunt turned away as he pulled Butcher free and wiped it on the back of an overturned couch. He didn’t notice the hand sticking out from underneath the piece of furniture.

  There were two doors at the end of the oak-panelled room. Edmunt tip-toed to the left-hand door. There were strange sounds coming from inside the room. He nodded to the blacksmith and they came close to the door, then Edmunt kicked it open and rushed inside, axe ready to strike any that might be waiting inside.

  The sounds were coming from a four-poster bed at the end of the room. Edmunt kept his axe ready and crept over the shredded bolsters and ripped clothing. There was something kicking and struggling on the bed. Edmunt bent low and edged towards the bed, ripped a curtain and brought his axe up to strike—but his axe stopped and he let out a strangled gasp.

  Staring up at him was the skinless face of what he guessed had been a middle-aged woman: the eyeballs bulged and the lipless mouth opened and closed. He saw that her tongue had been torn out.

  The hands and feet of the woman had been struck off and the wounds cauterised with hot irons. It seemed the beastmen had started torturing this hapless victim and then been disturbed or had broken off to find more prey.

  Edmunt averted his eyes and pulled the sheets over the woman’s body. But one of the woman’s mutilated arms came up and touched him. He turned to face her and saw pleading in her unblinking eyes. Pleading and understanding and—in an instant—he saw forgiveness in her face, for what he had to do.

  “What is it?” the blacksmith hissed from the open doorway.

  Edmunt shut his eyes and brought Butcher down into the skinned forehead, keeping his eyes closed until he had pulled the axe free, and let the curtains drop.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  It hardly seemed credible to Sigmund that they had sailed this way in the White Rose just two
days before. In some stretches of the river it was hard to believe that a ferocious battle was raging not more than a few miles away. Tranquil and undisturbed, chickens still pecked through the broad apple orchards. Behind an unburned hut, the first shoots of spring wheat were showing—but then another beast camp came into view and the effect was jarring. Beastmen had no place here. Smoke billowed up from Helmstrumburg, and every now and again the roar of battle or the blowing of a horn or ringing of a chapel bell came to them over the water.

  As the raft floated on, Sigmund wondered if they might drift downstream all the way to Altdorf. Finally, when it seemed the men could endure the cold and the wet no longer, they came alongside the mound and the four black standing stones, sharp and angular against the scattered forest.

  From the river, Sigmund counted at least ten beastmen as well as a strange shambolic figure that was capering around the top of the mound.

  Sigmund tried to see what the figure was doing, but then the raft drifted past the ridge of land and the mound was hidden. Out of sight, they all paddled and kicked hard to bring the raft to the shore.

  The jetty was unoccupied. The land behind the ridge of land was much as they had left it two mornings earlier: bushes and the occasional trees silent and still. The slopes were empty. It seemed that all the beastmen’s attention was focussed on the battle in the town. The only creatures were those that were around the mound.

  Sigmund thanked Sigmar. It looked like they had a chance of success.

  The men kicked and steered the crude raft towards the jetty. Osric caught the nearest upright and the raft swung round as he held them against the tug of the stream. For a moment it seemed that Osric would not be able to hold on and they would spin out of control back into the river, then Sigmund reached out and caught one of the uprights and they managed to drag the raft close enough to the edge for the men to pull it ashore.

  They moved quickly and quietly, grabbing their weapons, while Frantz and his dockers grabbed the precious firkins and hefted them onto their shoulders.

  Instead of going over the ridge, Sigmund led his men along the river bank, where the bushes and trees would offer them as much cover as possible. When they reached a patch of ferns Sigmund signalled them all to get down. He could see the beastmen guards, and recounted fifteen.

  The hooded figure was still capering around the top of the mound. It was hooded and bent, and gave the impression of being incredibly old. But contrary to this, the thing leaped round the stones with a strange agility and purpose, as if it were performing some arcane ritual.

  Sigmund’s mouth went dry. He had no doubt that he had to stop the ritual, but he also had to get close enough to allow them to kill the sentries without an alarm being sounded.

  Without winds to fan them, the fires in the town had died down by late afternoon. Without the cover of the burning buildings, Edmunt and his men returned to the Eel Street barricade, eight more beastman heads hanging from their belts.

  When they had slipped through the hole that the defenders had made in the barricade, each man dropped the heads onto the floor. The horns knocked against each other, gory necks dripped fresh blood, glassy eyes stared blindly up at the crowd of horrified onlookers. Some of the women started to cry, but the men stared at the things—not so much with hatred, but the certain knowledge that every beastman had to die, or the men and their families would.

  Edmunt looked exhausted, but he was unable to rest. When he wanted to shut his eyes the face of the woman in the Blessed Rest came back to him, skinned and still living, and he touched the haft of Butcher at his belt.

  The blade was dulled now, and he sat down, accepted a tankard of ale and a hunk of bread, and ate as he took out his whetstone and sharpened the blade into a smile.

  As the fires died down it was only a matter of time until the beastmen attacked again. Edmunt had posted sentries high up in the buildings by the barricades and a boy shouted down, “They’re coming!”

  There were shrieks of terror from some of the women, while the men took up their weapons with a weary resilience.

  Sigmund crawled through the ferns until he was within ten feet of the nearest sentry. The beastman leant on its spear as it turned its snout back and forth sniffing the breeze. There was a stink of musk. Sigmund loosed his sword in its sheath. He was so close he could see the flies that were crawling around the creature’s eyes. It stamped its hoof. The flies flew up into the air and it swatted at them with its hand. The mix of human and animal was horrifying, as if the wild beast had been mixed with the worst of human emotions: hatred, violence, and lust.

  Sigmund had his sword out. He drew his feet up under him, ready to leap up.

  The flies continued to buzz around the creature and it swatted them again. Sigmund leaped from the ferns, his sword a whirlwind of death as it struck the head from the beastman guard, and kept running as he struck the next down.

  Behind him the whole river bank rose up in anger. The beastmen bleated in shock as twenty men leapt up, their swords dealing death to the left and right. Osric gutted one beastman and lopped the arm off another, forearm and hand still gripping the knotted club as they all flew into the air. Then Osric paused to drive his sword through the wounded beast’s heart.

  Baltzer kept behind Osric and caught one creature on the back of the neck, his sword snagging as it caught in its spine.

  Theodor’s first shot hit a beastman under the chin and snapped the horned head back violently. The second hit another beast in the shoulder and it swirled as it fell, to have its throat cut as it lay helpless. The remaining beastmen ran to the base of the mound to protect their shaman. There was a ferocious struggle as the men tried to cut their way through—but even in death the beasts clutched the blades of the men of Helmstrumburg.

  Sigmund could feel the air begin to crackle with energy as the shaman’s voice rose in pitch, but even as his hair began to stand on end Stephan broke through the wall of fighting and roared as he charged the hooded spirit-charmer. It was only the roar that alerted the shaman to the danger. It turned and saw an Empire soldier charging towards it, spear held ready to thrust through its heart.

  The shaman brought up the skull rattle and there was a clap of thunder. An invisible force struck Stephan in the chest, ripping open his ribcage and flinging him back onto the floor: pulsing heart exposed to the sky.

  As Osric and his men struggled to cut down the last of the beastmen, Sigmund saw the shaman step up to the broken body of the spearman and reach down.

  “No!” Sigmund shouted, but Stephan’s body spasmed and the shaman stood with his forearm dripping blood, and a pulsing heart clenched in his fist.

  Sigmund cut the last beastman down, ran up the slope and grabbed the fallen Vorrsheimer’s spear, and hurled it at the cackling shaman. The steel head seemed to hang in the air before it struck the shaman full in the chest. Its body spasmed as a foot of steel impaled it. Bloody froth poured from the creature’s lips, its goat-legs buckled and it fell to the ground. Its rattle cracked with the impact, and human teeth fell out.

  As the foul creature died, one of the beastmen in the clearing put a horn to its lips and raised the alarm.

  “Blackpowder!” Sigmund shouted, and Frantz and his dockers sprinted up. At any moment there could be hundreds of beastmen charging through the trees. They used their knives to crowbar the firkin lids off, then placed one at the base of each of the four standing stones and then began to uncoil the fuse.

  Already the first beastmen were streaming back to the standing stones. Sigmund screamed at Osric to block their approach.

  Osric and his last ten men grabbed spears and shields from the fallen beastmen and spread out to cover the men working furiously at the mound. The first beastmen to arrive seemed to have been scattered in the forest. They did not come all together, but singly and without order.

  Osric and his men formed a ragged screen, parrying and blocking the desperate blows of the beastmen who saw the dead body of their shaman and attac
ked with new ferocity.

  Sigmund ran over the mound, trailed a fuse, then he suddenly tripped and fell into a hole that the beastmen had been digging. He gasped with shock when he saw that at the bottom of the hole, next to his right foot, was the enormous skeleton of a long-dead human warrior. A horned helm had slid across the skull’s face, scraps of cloth and armour had fallen through the collapsed bones. In its right hand the skeleton held an ancient broadsword, rimed and green with age, and in its left the old brass boss of a wooden shield, the thick linden timbers rotted away.

  Sigmund felt a chill run down his back. The treasurer’s book had said how Ortulf Jorg was buried with all the men who had fallen that day. This giant must be the man who killed the beastman leader a thousand years ago—and now Sigmund was here, destined to fight their leader himself.

  And this, perhaps, was his ancestor.

  Sigmund stared at the bones, as if looking for some sign or feature that he might recognise—but there was nothing. He heard a desperate shout and looked up to see Osric and his men fighting a desperate battle to hold back the berserk beastmen. He ran down the slope and fumbled to ram the fuse into the hole in the firkin. As he worked, he could feel the power of the stones as they began to hum, and his head hurt so much he could barely concentrate.

  “The lantern!” Sigmund shouted and Frantz’s face went ashen as he realised that they had left it in the ferns.

  Frantz began to sprint off, and Sigmund saw one of Osric’s men being cut down, the beastman leaping over the dead man and charging Sigmund.

  Sigmund’s sword hummed as he drew it. He took three strides forward, catching the creature at the base of one of its horns, slicing deep into its skull, but the creature ran full into him, and its momentum knocked him clean from his feet. Sigmund heard a gunshot and then another. He kicked the dead beast off, and was up, sword ready, when he saw Theodor, fumbling with the wheel-lock of his pistols as he reloaded.