03 - Liar's Peak

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  To safely navigate those crumbling rock terraces would take them precious time. She altered her own route to Mount Eel, taking her and Emil behind another of the sharp-topped mounds, where they could not be seen from the granite ribbon. If they were smart, the other squads of retreating men would do the same.

  Pinkert was already a few paces ahead of her. Mattes and Saar ran behind. She slackened slightly to let them catch up. Always keeping a hillside between themselves and the Kurgan invasion route, they crept to the base of Mount Eel. The multitudinous crunch of barbarian boots on complaining rock reverberated from around the stream bed. The wind carried to Angelika and the others a refrain of disappointed grunts and howls. Horns bleated uncertainly. The marauders had found no force to slaughter.

  They shinnied up the dry and dusty hillside to the spot where Angelika had installed her pit trap. She meticulously dismantled the disguising canopy of logs and soil, then slid with even greater attentiveness into the crevasse, avoiding the spikes she’d installed inside its mouth. Once she’d found her footing, she grabbed each sharpened stake in turn and heaved it from its resting spot. After stacking them in a pile, she beckoned her three companions to come down. When they were in, she had Mattes and Saar boost her back up again. She replaced the false thatch of logs and debris, leaving a space to wedge herself through. The last logs she returned from the inside, her feet on the shoulders of the men. When it was in place, sealing off the last shaft of daylight, they lowered her to face Sergeant Raab.

  “Jonas ordered this retreat?” he asked.

  “I lied,” said Angelika. “For some reason I decided you’d all be better off alive.”

  “Good thinking,” said Saar.

  Emil scowled.

  “I’m trying to conceive of a polite way to ask this,” said Angelika.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” said Emil. It was impossible to sit in the tiny space of the crevasse. He leaned against its crooked earthen wall, letting his weight go slack against it.

  “What in the name of Sigmar’s beard were you doing there, waiting for the enemy army to overrun your position?”

  “There is a book of protocol,” Mattes volunteered. “When there is no officer present to issue commands, the sergeant is required to choose the established response best fitting the pertaining facts. Though you might say the book refers only to standard engagements.”

  “I did not know the enemy’s strength,” Emil growled. “Had I imagined an entire legion, obviously I’d have called for a retreat.”

  “We’ve been right on their doorstep for days,” said Angelika, more to herself than the others. “They only came at us when we climbed practically into their noses.”

  “That’s more discipline than you’d expect of the Kurg.”

  “They’re holding for something,” said Angelika. “Or someone.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In the corpse-filled fissure, Merwin the halfling shifted his weight. Beneath him, a maggot-ridden body squished and resettled making him squirm in revulsion. Filch reached out a hand to him, pressing it reassuringly down on his friend’s forearm.

  Icy tears rolled down Merwin’s face. The archers scowled their disapproval at him. In a case like this, a fellow was supposed to hide his fear, out of consideration for his comrades. It was plain to Franziskus that the halfling could sense their hostility, and that it worsened his distress. He wished he could speak to them, to order them to knock it off, but the Kurgan were still up on the ridge. Their scraping footfalls could be heard on its surface, and not too far away, either.

  Low words were coughed in the Kurgan’s booming language. From their mere tone, Franziskus could not figure what was said. Instructions issued? Simple soldiers’ banter? If the latter, what might that consist of, precisely? Would they speak of home, complain about their commanders, bemoan the petty discomforts of the trail, as human warriors would? Franziskus could not imagine it. Surely they joked only about blood and murder, or babbled of their mad devotion for Chaos.

  Franziskus rubbed his chapped hands quietly together and attempted to project the air of calm self-control that was an officer’s greatest gift to his men. Whatever effect he rallied was countered by Jonas. Rassau, inert as a post, stared at an invisible point a few inches in front of his face.

  He’d succumbed to shock. Franziskus knew the symptoms well as he’d fallen prey to them himself on a similar occasion. These were not the first hours Franziskus had ever spent in a corpse pile; he’d been stuck in one on the day he first met Angelika. Groping for a cheery thought, he decided that this present dilemma was not so bad, in comparison to that previous circumstance. Then, there’d been dead men not only below him, but on top as well.

  The throaty barbarian voices came closer, combined with grunts of effort.

  Corpses cascaded down from above. Franziskus braced himself as the gored and naked torso of a tattooed barbarian sluiced down onto his neck and shoulders. Other slain men followed, the remains of several Gerolsbruchers included. Somewhere from among the party Franziskus heard a muffled weeping.

  The voices receded a little, as if the enemy troops had moved away from the mouth of the crevasse.

  Apparently, even Chaos barbarians shrank from the stink of death.

  “Lieutenant,” murmured Jonas.

  It took Franziskus a moment to realise that Jonas meant him. “Yes?” he said, equally hushed.

  “How long must we stay here?”

  “You decide, sir.”

  “But how long?”

  “I’ve been in worse spots.”

  “How many of them up there?”

  “We daren’t look.”

  “Let’s guess, then.”

  “They wouldn’t have thrown more bodies down if they knew we were here.”

  “From the sounds of it—how many?”

  “Let’s just wait.”

  “How many?” Jonas repeated. A harshness crept into his whisper.

  Afraid Jonas could be heard, Franziskus merely gestured: a resigned and baffled shrug.

  Filch obligingly cocked his ear, then held up all the lingers of his right hand, plus the forefinger of his left.

  “Are you certain?” asked Jonas.

  Filch stuck both his thumbs up.

  Franziskus was not so sure. As far as he knew, the halfling ear was not noted for any special acuity. Perhaps this was a unique talent of Filch’s, much like his preternatural skill at rock-throwing.

  “Follow me,” Jonas intoned.

  None of the fresh bodies had landed on him so he boosted himself up by climbing onto the shoulder of the archer next to him. He launched himself clumsily from the crevasse, faltered, recovered his balance, and hauled his sabre from his scabbard. Bellowing an unintelligible war-cry, he blundered at the marauders left to guard the ridgeline. Jonas was well into his charge before he saw that Filch had underestimated their numbers by half. Worse, no one else had yet emerged from the crevasse: Franziskus and the others still grappled their way through the layer of dead men.

  Jonas forgot them, choreographing the series of feints and slashes that would allow him to survive until his allies caught up. He dived at the nearest barbarian, slicing muscle from his ribs. He ducked down, rose up, thudded into the dying man, and used him as a shield while the axe-blows of three of his fellows darted his way. Two dug into their comrade’s back while the third went wide. Jonas threw the man at his attackers; two fell back. One slipped in the spilled viscera of his compatriot and fell backwards off the precipice.

  Meanwhile, Jonas had scourged the axe-hand of one Kurgan and stabbed through the breastbone of another. A Kurgan rushed at him from each of four directions; he spun his blade around, holding them at bay. Arrows whizzed into their necks and shoulders. At Franziskus’ urging, the Chelborg Archers had braced themselves with feet against one edge of the crevasse and backs to the opposite wall. From this graceless position, they could fire their missiles right away, without completing the difficult clamber from their
hiding place.

  A Kurgan on the melee’s periphery reached down for his war horn. Jonas bulled his way through his closest opponents to sabre it from him. He smashed the pommel of his sword into the sentry’s lips and teeth. The barbarian went down.

  Jonas had now manoeuvred himself so that all of the Kurgan were between him and his archers; a new volley blacked the air. Heaving, growling barbarians either ducked or collapsed. Franziskus made it out of the crevasse, followed by Filch. The halfling dashed past the Stirlander and neatly plucked a dagger from his belt. He dived onto the back of a thrashing marauder and plunged a dozen speedy cuts into the back of his head.

  Distracted by the arrows rushing at them, the Kurgan were now easier prey for Jonas’ blade and he scythed them like wheat. He laughed frenziedly as he slew the last two standing barbarians. Franziskus ran to the archers and helped them up out of the crevasse. As they freed themselves from it, they pivoted to help their comrades. Merwin shinnied out and ran to Filch, whose stabbing arm still worked ceaselessly on the carcass of his foe, and pulled him off. Filch’s numbed expression combined fury and dismay.

  “Go, before there are more,” Franziskus ordered his archers. They required no further exhortation, and ran full out back to the slope leading to their valley. Thick halfling feet rumbled after them.

  Jonas whirled, grinning like a wolf, as if daring invisible opponents to teem at him.

  “Jonas,” Franziskus shouted.

  The lieutenant jolted, as if from walking sleep, sheathed his sabre, and followed his fleeing party back down the slope.

  In their own hiding spot, sliced into the side of Mount Eel, Mattes and the sergeant argued.

  “You must,” Mattes demanded.

  “To even ask it of me is mutiny,” Emil replied.

  “Quiet, both of you,” said Angelika. Her eyes were closed and her arms were folded. She’d decided to attempt a nap, to recover strength she might need later, and had nearly nodded off. Then the debate had started.

  “He’s incapable!” said Mattes.

  “You know that’s insubordination.”

  “You think he’s a good leader?”

  “It is not for me, and especially not for you, to judge.”

  “Anyone with half a lick of sense can see it. The men trust you, but they don’t trust him.”

  “Soldiers need not trust. They need merely obey.”

  “They will both trust and obey you, Emil.”

  Emil clouted him sharply on the mouth. Nothing in his bearing had heralded the arrival of the blow. Mattes touched his bleeding lip.

  “That’s my answer to that,” said Emil.

  “But—”

  “No matter how you put the question, I’ll have the same answer for you. So, if you enjoy having teeth to fill your gums, I say shut it.”

  The clear water of the pebble stream washed against Ortak Nalgar’s blood-blackened boots. Chest out, hands hard at his side, the Chaos chieftain strode among his men, deciding which of them he would fatally punish. A force of nearly two hundred wove around him, in the midst of an empty valley, with no foe to slay.

  When he spoke, his voice reverberated through the steel chambers of his antlered helmet. His breath collected damply on the inside of his mouth-guard. “Who,” he demanded, “was the fool who sounded the horn of war?”

  The marauders snarled and cawed. They shoved and grappled, pushing a lightly armoured man to the fore. They punched at his kidneys until he doubled over, then kicked him flat. He was seized by the back of the neck and turned around, so that his face touched the earth where the chieftain’s feet were planted.

  “Speak your name,” Ortak Nalgar demanded. He waved off the other marauders, leaving the man to grovel unencumbered.

  “I am Zaba Gor,” the shamed man spat, “of the Sanxal tribe. I answer to my chieftain, who is Tharken Urtza. And to Vardek Crom, who defeated my chieftain in single combat. As you were defeated by him.”

  Ortak Nalgar ordered him to stand, and he did so, a defiant leer slashed across his face. The bravado was admirable, that of a true Kurgan war-maker.

  “Yes,” said Ortak Nalgar, “I, like your chieftain, am now, by right of conquest, commanded by Vardek Crom. And he has commanded me to command you to exercise the thing the mutaa of the Soft Lands call discipline. Do you know what this thing is, Zaba Gor of the Sanxal tribe?”

  “I spit on it,” said Zaba Gor. “It is not our way.”

  Ortak Nalgar reached to his waist and unbuckled a set of vicious-looking fighting claws. Zaba Gor quailed when he saw them: heartpuncher claws.

  “Answer me, this, then, Zaba Gor of the Sanxal tribe. How, despite our superior courage, the relentlessness of our blood-hunger, and our utter submission to Chaos Undivided, have the fat suckling pigs of the Soft Lands, for so many years, eluded ultimate destruction at our deserving hands?” Slowly, Ortak Nalgar slipped the fighting claws onto his right hand.

  “They have not died, because Zaba Gor has not yet had the chance to kill them.”

  “You are wrong, Zaba Gor. After Vardek Crom defeated me, after he brought his swift axe down upon my helm, and sank me to my knees, and I was forced to make the four supplications to him, he held out his vast hand to me and he pulled me up. And then he told me his secret. He would use the Soft Ones’ weapon against them. The weapon they’ve used to eternally thwart us,” said Ortak Nalgar, “is this thing called discipline.

  “They think. They wait. They act in concert. Thus do plump, cowardly foes defeat us time and again. What Vardek Crom has taught me, I now teach you. We will think. We will wait. We will act together. To do this, we must follow orders. Even from chieftains who are not of our tribe. Tell me, Zaba Gor, how did you fail to obey the commands of Vardek Crom?”

  Zaba Gor did not answer but steeled himself to receive the inevitable blow.

  Ortak Nalgar did not yet strike it, but flexed the talons of his heartpuncher claws. “I will explain, then. You sounded the war horn when you were instructed to keep silent.”

  “I saw the foe.”

  “A few men. Hardly worth the charge. Yet if there are Soft Ones, or accursed dwarfs, anywhere near, they’ll have heard the horn. They’ll know where we muster. We did not want them to know this.” The thumb was the final digit to receive its claw. “We are concealing our presence, Zaba Gor. Waiting. Do you understand?”

  Emboldened by his imminent death, Zaba Gor straightened his spine. “It is mutaa, to wait, and hide, and sneak.”

  “It is not mutaa if it brings victory.”

  “What victory? Waiting? Waiting is not victory.”

  “Your chieftain of chieftains says it will bring victory, and so it will.”

  “Chaos does not wait. Chaos strikes.”

  “Chaos has waited three thousand years and now it will win. So says Vardek Crom.”

  “I have not heard Vardek Crom say this. I have only heard you say it.”

  Ortak Nalgar jolted his open hand into Zaba Gor’s breastbone, piercing his heart in four places. He held his hand there and shook it.

  Zaba Gor tried to spit at his killer, but could manage only a meagre dribble of drool, which ran down his chin. “He who thinks like a Soft One will die like a Soft One,” he choked. “Then we will be free again.”

  Ortak Nalgar threw him to the ground. Zaba Gor’s last choking words were words of challenge. If others were ready to pick them up, Ortak Nalgar would have to fight and kill them. Several of the men seethed breathy hate at him, but when he presented them his helmeted face, they hung their heads in submission. None would dare strike at him. While he commanded them, they would obey the edicts of Vardek Crom, no matter how peculiar they seemed.

  “Where is the tracker?” he demanded.

  One man stepped forward nervously “Many were here, glorious one.”

  “How many?”

  “Two warbands’ worth, maybe three.” The tracker tried not to look at the red ends of the heartpuncher claws.

  “Where have they g
one?”

  “Into the hills, great one.”

  “They must be caught and slain. We cannot let them return home to warn of our gathering here.” Ortak Nalgar marched toward the terraced cliff that would lead him back to their waterfall encampment. “Point to where the Soft Ones hide.”

  “I don’t know, fearsome one. Our other tracker died crossing the mountains.”

  Ortak Nalgar twisted the tracker’s neck until it snapped and threw him aside.

  “Do we have another tracker?”

  The barbarian horde answered with silence.

  “Unleash the hound.”

  “It’s him,” exclaimed Jonas. Only after the first word was uttered did he remember his predicament, after that he calmed his tone. He and the remnants of his assault force crouched behind a cresting line of boulders near the bottom of the slope. It, and a patch of scraggly mountain briars, concealed their presence from the two hundred or so Kurgan marauders milling in their abandoned encampment by the stony stream. Rassau couldn’t help counting the size of his squadron: there was himself, one swordsman, ten archers, two halflings, and, at his right hand, Franziskus. Thirteen to one odds. And one of those on the other side was the Chaos chieftain, who had to count as an entire patrol of men, all by himself.

  “What can we do?” he asked Franziskus, who replied with a gesture of silence.

  The soldiers took worried note of this reversal of command.

  Together they watched as Ortak Nalgar eviscerated the chest of his henchman with his taloned hand. An archer whistled softly, and was rewarded by a pointed elbowing from the man next to him.

  “They don’t seem so pleased to follow him,” Jonas mouthed.

  I know the sentiment, thought Fengler, who had gone up to the ribbon as one of four swordsmen, and was now the sole survivor.

  “They obey out of fear, and nought else,” said Franziskus.