The soldiers held fast to their formation as the creatures stampeded nearer, assuming that something was chasing the wild beasts, and would soon appear atop the ridge. The archers kept their arrows ready, relaxing only after several minutes had passed, and the antelope were galloping skittishly past them. All but one loped determinedly onwards, but the last steinbock, one of the slim females, halted on the flank of the soldiers’ dissolving formation.
“Sigmar’s given us a gift of fresh meat!” an archer cried.
“No, wait,” shouted Angelika, but she was too far from the formation.
Bowmen pivoted to launch a half-dozen arrows into the antelope’s haunches. The creature staggered at them, then fell neatly on its flanks.
“No,” Angelika yelled again.
A corporal from the archer’s ranks, laughing excitedly, separating himself from his fellows to trot over to the slain creature.
Angelika stood and ran, waving her arms and shouting.
The bow-corporal hunched over the thrashing steinbock. A sharp-tipped, keratinous tentacle erupted from the dying animal’s flank to plunge between the soldier’s legs and up into his body cavity. His throaty grunt of appalled astonishment lasted for a brief instant before falling silent. The corporal’s neck distended upwards. Gore spurted from his ears and mouth. The tentacle had pushed its way up through him, and now pressed itself against the roof of his skull. It lifted his dangling feet from the ground. His fellow soldiers stood watching, stock-still, bows held uselessly at their sides.
Stunned inaction was a common reaction to the presence of Chaos.
The steinbock was situated on the column’s right flank. Emil rode down its left side, shouting, exhorting the men to fire.
Angelika covered her face with her hand. Franziskus drew his sabre. She reached under his coat to seize him by the belt, to stop him from running at the creature.
The corporal’s neck stretched and strained. A second tentacle snaked out from the antelope’s carcass, coiling tight around his ankles, snapping them together. The two appendages worked together to snap the soldier’s body taut. His arms flailed; he was still alive, struggling helplessly.
“Finish him,” Emil shouted. “Finish him!”
The archers raised their bows, and, with trembling, wayward arms, loosed a volley of arrows. Contrary to Emil’s command, they aimed not for their comrade’s writhing body, but at the jigging carcass of the stein-bock. A handful of arrows pounded into its ribs and haunches. The rest struck far wide of the mark.
At the junction between neck and torso, the tensile power of the corporal’s flesh reached its limit. The head tore bloodily loose, exposing the serpentine tentacle inside. It flopped and writhed, the corporal’s head stuck to its end like a puppet. It swung itself at the column of stunned men, who fell back before it. The archers tripped over one another in an effort to escape it. One, his route of escape blocked by the jammed bodies of his comrades, received a glancing blow from the corporal’s skull. He fell to his hands and knees and quaked, piteously sobbing.
Sabre in his off-hand and reins in his right, Jonas rode down on the mutated beast. His nervous horse tried to veer but with soothing words and legs tight in the stirrups, the lieutenant kept it steady. As his steed galloped between the steinbock and the slain corporal, Jonas’ sabre cut through the main tentacle. The archer’s corpse thudded to the ground. The antelope’s body shuddered and bucked; Jonas rode his horse back to spear it in the side. He left the weapon inside the beast’s quivering trunk. Jonas let his horse carry him a good distance from it, then dismounted. The horse circled and bucked; Emil led his to its side, to help calm it.
What was left of the company’s formation shattered. They formed a wide circle around the lifeless bodies of the creature and their comrade.
Angelika approached Jonas. “Burn the body. Your man, too, just to be safe. The smoke can be noxious; build the pyre downwind.”
Jonas squinted but was otherwise expressionless. “You were shouting, before the—the Chaos thing attacked.”
“Indeed I was.”
“Warning them.”
She nodded, a little.
“You must stay beside me, to give me quick advice.” He wiped something from his eye. “No matter what the whisperers may say.”
The afternoon’s march was a dispirited trudge. The clouds parted and the sky grew blindingly bright. As the air warmed, soldiers doffed cloaks and coats, adding them to the weighty bundles on their backs. The soldiers swigged intemperately from their canteens. Few words were spoken. The shock of the Chaos attack resonated in every cough.
Franziskus did not know where to place himself. Angelika walked up front, alongside Jonas’ horse. An invitation to join them had not been forthcoming, and he wasn’t sure he wanted one, anyway. He found himself among the stragglers. Several of the archers, presumably friends to the slain corporal, had joined their number as well. They shuffled along, dragging their feet, like old men after a long night of over-indulgence. Franziskus assigned himself the task of finding heartening words for them. He failed at it, miserably.
The ground grew rockier as the day drudged on. Eventually they left the long grasses behind to shuttle along a series of stony crests shaped like lolling ocean waves. The company trekked up, then down, then up again. Between the second and third crests, they found an obelisk of polished white quartz tilting from a filled-in crevasse. It was ten feet tall; angular runes, pitted and smoothed by centuries of exposure, ringed only its lower surfaces.
“What is it?” asked Jonas. “Some Kurgan hex?”
Angelika took a cursory peer at it, just to be sure. “No, dwarven. And very old. It’s just a territory marker. I don’t read dwarf script, but you see even older ones in the Blackfire, where their colonies are all long abandoned.”
Jonas ran gloved fingers along the raised runic letters. “They’re not warning us to keep out, are they?”
“As I said, I don’t read Dwarf, but my guess is this is one dwarf clan telling another where their lands begin. If you’re worried about dwarfs, you shouldn’t have come up here. These peaks are rife with them.”
“The dwarfs hate the enemy as much as we do.”
“My understanding is that if they hate something, they hate it much worse than anyone else.”
“I wish we would run across some, to enlist their aid. Or advice, leastways.”
“Maybe they could loan you a scout.”
“Doubtful. Their forces have been drawn north to fight an orcish army that’s allied itself with the foe.”
“That may be for the better. Dwarfs can be quick to reach for their weapons if you catch them in a foul mood. Which is how one always catches them.”
“They’re our allies in this war.”
“Let’s hope they keep that in mind.” Angelika patted the menhir. “At any rate, if there are dwarfs here, they’ll see us before we see them.”
“They’ll parley before firing their crossbows at us.” Jonas gestured to Emil, who waved the men onward. They responded sluggishly. From their sighs and grunts, it was clear they’d hoped for a longer stop.
About an hour later, a soft hand tugged at Franziskus’ fingers. He looked down to see which halfling it was. Filch held out a small heel of hard white cheese. “Care for a snack?” he asked.
Franziskus did not, but accepted the nugget of food to be polite. He nibbled cautiously at it. The cheese proved rich and comforting, with a walnut aftertaste. It was, truth be told, the best piece of cheese Franziskus had tasted for as long as he could remember. He gulped it down shamelessly. Filch and the two other halflings, who had ringed around him, smiled proudly.
Filch pointed to the fidgety one. “This is his cheese. He’s a cheesemaker.”
Franziskus tried hard to remember the name, and finally it came to him: Merwin. And the third one, the fellow with the proud carriage, was Bodo. “That is an extremely fine cheese, Merwin.”
Merwin beamed. “I don’t have provisions for
everyone, but seeing as we know you…”
“That’s especially kind, given that our acquaintance consists chiefly of your friend Filch here banging me in the head with a rock.”
Filch hung his head. “The cheese is meant by way of apology.”
“It is such a splendid cheese that any mea culpa is unquestionably accepted.” Franziskus preferred a smile.
“Unquestionably,” repeated Filch. “That’s good. I was worried you might bear a grudge. You tall folk are sometimes slow to let go of a grievance. No offence.”
“Our skulls are, compared to yours, regrettably thin and delicate. It is best not to try to stave them in, if you wish to stay in our good graces.”
“It was a lucky shot, I promise you. And also I want you to know that I in no way wished you hanged. Neither did Merwin or Bodo, either.”
“That is reassuring, Filch.”
“Beaten, perhaps. But never hanged.”
“And only slightly beaten, I hope.”
“Oh yes. Only slightly. Would you also like a dash of tawny port?”
Franziskus allowed that he would, and Merwin produced and uncorked a small ceramic jar. He dribbled a tiny serving of fortified brandy into a wooden cup, which he’d brushed clean with his forefinger. He handed it up to Franziskus, but Filch nudged him.
“Human-sized portion, Merwin. Human-sized portion,” he muttered.
Merwin poured again, then passed over the more generous serving. Franziskus let the thick liquor loll about on his tongue; it was potent and sweet.
Filch watched him drink. “You are experienced, Franziskus, with this sort of business?”
“What do you mean?”
“This business of warfare. And—you know. Chaos.”
Bodo cleared his throat—a deep, disapproving sound. “What he means to say is, he and Merwin have got cold feet. Now that they saw what they’re facing.”
His compatriots fussed at him in protest. Merwin muttered something about having said no such thing. Franziskus gave the cup back. Merwin upended it over his tongue, getting the last few drops out of it before returning it, unwashed, to his pack.
“Well,” Franziskus extemporised, “I am no witch-hunter. Certainly no bold officer, not like Lieutenant Rassau. But this is not my first encounter with daemons and the like. I wish it were.”
“Seeing that,” said Filch, rubbing his stomach, “it upset my digestion completely.”
“You’ll have to harden yourself,” said Bodo, “if you want to go to war.”
“Have you, Franziskus?” Filch asked. “Hardened yourself?”
“You can never harden yourself, not completely. Perhaps against orcs, or goblins, or troops from another country. Chaos, though… it never loses its power to knot a man’s gut. So if you feel fear, do not think yourselves inadequate. I have heard much talk of Chaos, but from my experience of it, it is pure wrongness given solidity and clothed in flesh. It terrifies us, because it is everything that should not be. If you do not feel dread, when you see a thing like we just saw, that is the time to question yourself. Because then you know that madness has taken you completely.”
“I would not like to go mad,” said Filch. “But even worse would be if the children and old people from my village were forced to meet such horrors. That is why we’ve come—because the lieutenant’s words stirred us, and helped us to see that.”
“Then that is all you must do, if called upon to face a creature like that. Remember why you fight.”
Filch’s lips moved, as if he was memorising Franziskus’ words for later reference.
“We can fight fiercely, if need be,” declared Bodo. “Our kind might be small and weak, compared to them Kurgan barbarians. But we have determination, and will not give up.”
“That is my friend Angelika’s strength, also.”
They’d allowed the gap between themselves and the last of the human stragglers to widen. Franziskus quickened his stride; the halflings followed suit. Bits of dried brown vegetation crunched beneath their bare and bone-shod feet.
“Filch, who is left to care for your kinfolk, with your two brothers gone?”
“I have no kin, not to speak of. Unless you count Curran’s wife, Lily. Which I do not, seeing as she’d as soon hit me with a broom as look at me.”
“All of her people, all the Whiteapples, has always been the same way,” said Merwin. “Pinched and thin-skinned. Only a fellow as stubborn as Curran could ever have married her. Not to speak ill of the dead.”
“No,” said Bodo. “Not to speak ill of the dead.”
Merwin could clearly see that he’d upset his friends, but seemed to feel he could dig himself out if only he kept yammering. “No, not to speak ill at all. Because everyone will be the first to say that good old Curran had a temper on him. For example, him getting all lathered because of your friend Angelika being caught looting the body of Elias Two-Beer. Our neighbour, who he carried on as if they was best friends or somewhat. Why, him and Elias hadn’t said a kind word to each other in six, seven years. Isn’t that the truth, Bodo?”
Bodo held his tongue.
“Curran said that this friend of his had toasted him at his wedding,” Franziskus ventured.
Merwin was undeterred. “That’s just what I’m saying, then, isn’t it? Because that was well more than six, seven years past.”
“What does it matter now?” Bodo demanded.
“It’s just that people are funny, that’s all I’m saying. I find it odd, that’s all. I’m not saying a man’s not got a right to be odd. Some might say I’m plenty odd, myself.”
“Some might indeed,” Bodo answered.
“Then you see what I mean,” exclaimed Merwin.
Bodo shook his head.
“Perhaps,” said Franziskus, “if Curran had not spoken to his friend in many years, and then seen him killed, that would be the cause of his passion to have us hanged. Regret, that he had not reconciled with him before it was too late.”
Filch sniffled. Bodo whipped a handkerchief from his vest pocket and placed in his hand. “You’re wise, for a man of your height.”
“If only it did me any good,” Franziskus replied.
They made camp that night on the rock-strewn beach of a cold, round lake. Its shore offered enemies only one approach; sloping hills rose in a horseshoe around the lake from the west, north and east. Alone among the marchers, the halflings took an interest in bathing. They unpacked hand-sized bars of soap and knelt over the shoreline, cleaning their hands and feet. The soldiers gathered from a distance, amused by the high piles of lather the half-men built up on their heads. It gave off a scent of almonds. Merwin offered to share the soap, but only Franziskus availed himself. Though his hair was greasy and lank, he would not risk making a spectacle of himself by washing it in front of the men.
Angelika stood by as Jonas conferred with Emil. She could not tell if she was meant to take part, or wait to be called upon. The men were nervous. Since the steinbock incident, they’d encountered neither friend nor foe. They’d passed a number of farmhouses, each of them burnt, and had called out to any inhabitants still hiding inside. They’d garnered no replies.
The day’s heat had given way to a damp chill. Jonas finally consulted her: “The men will be happier if they can warm themselves. Is it safe to light fires?”
“Might as well. You’ve nearly six dozen men here. They’ll make so much noise snoring and tossing that any enemy scout with half an eardrum could detect them from a mile away. You can’t rely on keeping yourselves hid; you’ll just have to put up good defences and hope no one comes at you.”
“What about more creatures of the enemy?”
“Who knows what senses they use to find prey? If they come, they come. You’ll have to be ready for them.”
Emil went off to lay out a perimeter and assign guard duties. Angelika turned to gaze into the lake’s black waters.
“We will of course not be sleeping in any proximity to one another,” Jonas told her
.
“I was about to make the same request.”
Only after the words had leapt from her mouth did she remember: she’d hoped to get close to him again, so she could search his possessions for her stolen property.
Angelika tried to conceive a verbal manoeuvre to smoothly move her from her present defensive posture back to Jonas’ side. None came to mind. If anything, her mind conceived of a good half dozen select phrases, each of which would inform the lieutenant of her current opinion of him in definitive and exacting detail. The last thing she wanted from him was undying affection, but this kind of high-handedness was intolerable in any man, let alone a recent bed partner. She stalked off, knowing that any further discussion could lead to bloodshed.
If there were Chaos creatures or barbarians lurking about the lake, they failed to show themselves. The men woke at dawn and broke camp with wordless efficiency. Angelika stepped across the still bodies of stertorous halflings to rouse Franziskus, placing a gentle boot-tip on his shoulder. He started up and reached out to wake Filch.
She gestured to stop him. “Why don’t you acquaint yourself with some of the men? These halflings won’t have the ring.”
Franziskus gazed at her blearily “I wasn’t looking for it.”
She walked away. “The sooner we find it, the quicker we get out of here.”
The young Stirlander looked at the busy soldiers, then at the slumbering half-men. They had not asked him if he was a deserter. The Gerolsbruch Swordsmen would.
* * *
For the next two days, Franziskus remained with the halflings. The first day passed without incident, marked only by the eerie lack of all contact with man or beast. Angelika came back from the head of the column several times, to inquire after his success in befriending the soldiers. After a while, she stopped asking.
The entire matter troubled him. Once, Angelika noticed Filch attempting to eavesdrop on them. Franziskus saw that familiar slow fury on her face; it showed itself as a miniscule tightening, an ominous absence of expression. A mental image confronted him, of Angelika’s knife at Filch’s throat. He thought to tell her that, rock-throwing skills aside, the little man seemed harmless. Then he remembered the fellow’s unfortunate name. It hardly inspired trust, did it?
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