by Robert Earl
The rest of his company watched the cauldron in between watching the advance of the infantry towards the Striganies’ encampment. Soon the fire had grown strong enough to bring the water to the boil. Croop slung his bow over his shoulder, and went to oversee this most vital of operations. One of the cooks was standing on the small stepladder beside the cauldron, and, whilst his mate held it, he poured in an entire sack of oats.
“Not too many at once,” Croop told him, quite unnecessarily, “and don’t forget to stir in the honey after it’s stopped boiling.”
“Right you are, Lumpen,” the cook said.
By the time the oats had boiled into a rich, creamy mess, the first companies of advancing mercenaries had discovered the Striganies’ pit traps. The air was filled with their shouts of surprise and screams of agony. Not that the sounds held the halflings’ attention for long. After all, the air was also filled with the smell of boiling porridge, and, suddenly, the rich smell of warm honey.
“That’s right,” Croop said, licking his lips in approval, as, with a practiced flourish, the cook upended a huge pot of honey over the cauldron.
The cook needed no encouragement as he twisted the jar to ease out the last ripple of honey. Then, he handed the pot down and started stirring. Not a single halfling in the company had eyes for anything other than the fire-blackened cauldron, and the cook who stood above it. As he stirred the honey into the porridge, he looked like a priest gazing into the oracle of some primitive religion.
“How does it look?” Croop asked the cook, who, with an artist’s flare for timing, made his comrades wait for a while before tapping the side of the cauldron with his ladle.
“Looks ready to me,” he said. “Anybody hungry?”
In the rush to the cauldron, Croop only maintained his position as first amongst equals by the judicious use of his elbows and knees. His weapons were quite forgotten, replaced by the bowl that he carried on his belt.
“There you go, captain,” the cook said, ladling out a great dollop of the porridge. It smelt perfect, Croop thought, as he worked his way out of the scrum. Somehow, the hint of wood smoke combined with the honey to add something special to the taste of camp porridge.
It was only after he had licked his bowl clean that he noticed the red flag, which was supposed to be the archers’ signal, waving from the top of the hill. Then he heard the hiss of the other companies’ arrows, and realised that they were supposed to be firing too.
He cursed and looked around. His lads were busily wolfing down their breakfasts. Apart from the sound of spoons scraping bowls, and polite belches, the company was silent. It was certainly inactive.
Croop watched the cloud of arrows disappear into the Striganies’ stockade, and listened to the screams that floated back out. With a last regretful look at the cauldron, he slung his bowl back on his belt, shoved his spoon into his boot and unlimbered his bow.
“Right then, lads,” he called out, nocking an arrow to the string, “time to start earning our bacon.”
“There’s bacon, too?” one of them asked hopefully. Croop glared at him, but the cook just shook his head.
“No bacon,” he said, “but look at all those birds. Be lucky if some of our arrows found their way into them, wouldn’t it?”
As one, the three dozen halflings looked up at the wheeling flock of birds above. Their martial spirit flared into life, and, all of a sudden, their bows were drawn, and their eyes were beady as they aimed up into the sky.
Croop was proud of their common sense.
“We’ll fire with the next volley,” he decided. “Might as well make it look good. Ready? Then-”
Croop stopped, although his mouth remained open. In a single moment, the mighty flock above him had disintegrated, its formation lost in a sudden downward swoop of a thousand feathered bodies. The birds plummeted towards the mercenaries, their bodies thick as fog as they homed in on the companies of archers below.
Unnerved by the bizarre behaviour, Croop remained paralysed for another second. Then he shrugged. Whatever the reason, the birds’ suicidal behaviour ultimately meant just one thing: more meat for the pot.
“Fire!” he called, sweeping his hat down. All around him, his lads’ bowstrings strummed and skewered birds started to fall, thumping onto the ground like grisly apples from some bloody tree.
Even though the halflings’ arrows flew true, there were more birds than marksmen. Before they could manage even one more volley, the birds were upon them, pecking and scratching, and clawing at eyes and arteries with a murderously effective instinct.
Without wasting time to wonder how this could be happening, Croop grabbed at one of his attackers, a raven with talons as big as an eagle’s, and wrung its neck. The vertebrae snapped, and, fighting the urge to stow the bird safely in his satchel, Croop twisted away from a flurry of pecks that would have blinded him. He lashed out, his fist thwacking into a ball of feathers, and, using his forearm to defend his face, he drew his short sword and started laying about him.
Around him, his company was in confusion. Beneath the avian assault, it was every halfling for himself. Only the fact that they fought with the abandon of natural poultrymen saved them. Soon, the air was filled with bloody feathers and the ground was littered with the twitching bodies of crippled birds.
As suddenly as the attack had come, Croop realised that it had ended. The carnage had been terrible. Feathered carcasses lay broken and fluttering all around. A few of his lads were cut, and one, wailing as he clutched his face, hadn’t been quick enough to save his eye.
Croop staggered around, taking in the scene, and peering after the surviving birds. Whatever madness had driven them into the attack seemed to have been broken, although, not two hundred feet distant, he could see that another company of archers was still lost beneath a chaotic blizzard of squawking birds, their talons red with victory.
Beyond them, Croop could see that a militia company had broken. The men were fleeing into the blasted heath of this cursed place, their attackers still chasing them, and descending upon any who fell.
“What in the Gardens of the Moot was that?” the cook asked, wiping blood from his forehead, and coming to stand beside his captain. Croop just shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but we might as well get plucking. Wings for a stew and breasts for pies, do you think?”
“Yes, captain,” the cook replied, and, impressed as always by the martial genius of his leader, he began to organise the butchery. “That’s it. All of you, that is enough. We have finished with the flock. We can do no more with it.”
Dannie heard the voice through the fog of his trance. It had come over him gradually as he had chanted, this trance, blotting out the feeling of the ground beneath his crossed legs, and replacing it with the feeling or air beneath his wings.
“Open your eyes. Wake up.”
He obeyed, blinking open his eyes. He half expecting to see the wide panorama of the heath spread out beneath him and his flock, or, maybe, the pale, upturned targets of the egg stealers’ faces. As it was, all he saw was the muddy ground of the amphitheatre, and the gathering of petrus and other apprentices.
He waited for the feeling of vertigo to pass, and then flexed his wings… his arms. He opened his mouth, and a squawk came out. He tried again. He felt horribly detached from his body, as though it were an ill-fitting suit of clothes that had been made for somebody else.
“Petru Engel?” he called, coughing to clear his throat.
“He’s already gone,” a woman said. Dannie turned to find an old woman sitting behind him. Her face was as wrinkled as an elephant’s hide, although her eyes were as clear as ice. She was familiar, although his head was still too full of the flutter of wings and the clenching of talons to place her.
“I know you,” he said, his voice sounding strange in his ears.
The crone smiled, wide enough to reveal her remaining teeth.
“You know my darling Chera,” she corrected. “M
e, you just glanced at.”
“Chera.” Dannie said the name as if it were part of some charm. In a way, he supposed, it was. “Where is she?”
“She’s fighting on the perimeter.”
For the first time, Dannie heard the noises of the battle beyond: the screams, the cries, and the thunk of steel in flesh, wood and bone.
He leapt to his feet, and then staggered to one side in a fit of dizziness. The crone grabbed his elbow with surprisingly strong fingers.
“Don’t worry,” she said, wining. “Chera’s a good girl. She’ll make it back. Now, help an old woman to the inner stockade. I may be of some small help when the killing starts.”
She smiled up at Dannie with a cold ferocity that reminded him of the Old Father. He shuddered, and then, he helped her to help him towards the ramparts of the inner stockade. As they arrived, some of the children rushed past them from the abandoned ramparts of the outer stockade.
“Are they through?” Dannie asked one, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. The youngster, who was perhaps eight years old, nodded. His clothes were bloodstained, and his teeth were chattering with nerves, but there was a fierce pride in his eyes.
“Yes, petru, they’re through. Wait until my dad gets to them, though. Then they’ll be sorry.”
Dannie nodded, and, letting the child go, made his way to a post behind the barricades of the inner stockade.
Later, Dannie would wonder if it was just a coincidence that, when he turned around, he found himself next to Chera. Somehow, he doubted it. Apart from anything else, the crone whom he had escorted had been the very picture of smugness as the two had met.
“Hello,” Dannie said, looking at Chera and wishing that he could think of something else to say. In the midst of battle, she looked even lovelier than ever. Her eyes were bright, and her chest was heaving. Dannie watched it heave, and then, tearing his eyes away, he saw that she was watching him with a cautious smile. Even the spattering of blood, bright red on her linen tunic, seemed perfectly placed, the flash of colour a perfect accompaniment to her fair complexion.
“Hello,” Chera said back, her flushed cheeks becoming even rosier as she fiddled with her billhook. “I saw what you did with those birds. It was wonderful. We’d have all been killed by archers if you hadn’t done it.”
Dannie heard the adoration in her voice, and his back straightened. All of a sudden, his head cleared of the last, fluttering uncertainties. He knew exactly who he was, and what he had to do.
“Thank you,” he said, “but what use would I have been if you had not defended the outer stockade?”
“That’s fallen now,” Chera said, lowering her eyes modestly.
“That was the plan,” Dannie said. “I’m glad that you’re here with me.”
“Me too,” Chera said.
The two looked at each other, no longer shy. Then an arrow zipped between them, and they turned to see the rush of mercenaries that were approaching through the abandoned caravans beyond.
They were Estalian, and Dannie saw that there was more of the bull about these swarthy men than just the gold-plated ox skull of their totem. They were stocky, almost as burly as dwarfs beneath their leather armour and black capes, and their heads were lowered as they charged. Even their war cry, a deep, ululating bellow, was bovine, and the twin sabres they carried were held outstretched, the tips as wide apart as those of a bull’s horns.
Dannie glanced across at Chera. She reached over and squeezed his hand. It was the first time that they had touched. Dannie grinned, happy and invincible, and, at that moment, the Estalians hit the barricade. “It’s sorcery,” Vespero decided. His second in command had joined him, and the two Tileans stood, side by side, as they watched the archers fleeing beneath the flocks of birds.
“I don’t remember any mention, of sorcery in the contract, captain,” the second in command said to Vespero, making sure that his voice was loud enough for Blyseden to hear.
Blyseden, however, wasn’t listening.
“No,” Vespero agreed, “there wasn’t any mention at all.”
The Tileans paused and watched one of the archers, tiny with distance, trip over his own feet. Something that might have been a vulture landed on him, and soon it was joined by other birds. Even at this distance, their reddening beaks made the archer’s fate clear.
“Hardly an acceptable way of doing business with professional men like us,” Vespero’s deputy mused, and his captain looked at him, his dark features expressionless.
As one, the two Tileans turned and started to count. They counted how many of their men stood on the hill. They counted how many of their commander’s men, the handful of soldiers he had taken from Aver-land’s keep, remained. Then they smiled.
Vespero decided that the sight of the feasting vulture below was good omen. Defeat held out as many possibilities as victory, and, often, quite a lot more. They would just have to make sure that they kept some of Blyseden’s men alive to dig up the pay chest for them.
“Sigmar curse that filthy Strigany magic,” Blyseden muttered, peering through his telescope, “but those cowards can be damned if they think that I’m paying them after this. They’re only birds, after all.”
Vespero looked at his second-in-command, who tipped a wink to another man. Suddenly, all of the Tileans’ hands seemed to be on their sword hilts, and each of Blyseden’s men seemed to be surrounded.
“Ah, wait. Wait, there it is! We’ve broken the Striganies’ line,” Blyseden exulted. “Look at them run.”
Vespero frowned as he saw the collapse of the Striganies’ stockade. The defenders were in full flight, pursued by victorious mercenaries into the tangled depths of their makeshift city.
He tried to hide his disappointment as he lifted his hand from his sword hilt and contemplated a future in which his company would have to make do with the meagre spoils of victory, rather than the riper consolations of defeat.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Grab a bull by the balls and the rest of it will follow.”
– Strigany aphorism At first, Mihai had complained bitterly about the task that he had been given. The plan was of Petru Engel’s devising, and although Mihai’s father had been in the wagon at the time, the petru had given him his orders. The Kazarkhan, newly appointed and newly washed, had merely listened, while the chirurgeon set his broken bones.
Mihai had remained silent too, until Engel had finished. Then he had complained, long and loudly. It wasn’t just that he was afraid of missing the main battle, and his chance to shine in front of Chera, but because he knew, he just knew, that jokes about his task would follow him for years to come.
Brock, sweating with the pain of his treatment, had waited until Mihai finished talking. Then he looked up at his son with an expression that asked why he was still there, and the conversation had finished.
Mihai, cursing all the while, had returned to his caravan to round up the twins, and together they had scouted around the corrals.
They had found six horses to their liking. Despite the hardships of the past months, they were fit and healthy. They were also ready for what needed to be done. Together, the three men had camouflaged themselves and their animals with sackcloth and ashes. Then they had slipped away into the night.
Now, with the distant roar of the battle drifting through the fading afternoon light, Mihai lay on the lip of the hollow where they were hiding, scanning the heath around them. The road was to his left, slightly raised above the sinking dampness of the rest of the place. It disappeared around the hillock that lay between here and Flintmar, and Mihai was watching the men who were moving on top of it. They had been easy to spot: their uniforms were the brightest thing in this drab place, and their armour shone, even without any sunlight. A single pavilion tent stood in their midst, and a pennant hung limply down from a flag pole.
Mihai frowned, and put them out of his mind. He hadn’t been sent out here to deal with these people, whoever they were.
The sound of
hoof beats dragged his attention in the other direction, and he peered back down the road. Here was his prey. He slithered back down to the muzzled horses, and smiled at the twins.
“I think we’re in business,” he told them.
The two of them exchanged a worried look. “What do you think people will say if they find out what we’ve been up to?” Bran asked.
“Why do you even want to think of it?” Boris asked him. “They won’t need your help to mock us.”
“He’s right,” Mihai agreed. “We’ll just tell everybody that the petru sent us on a secret mission.”
The three thought about this. None of them looked particularly happy.
“I reckon Engel sent us as a punishment for following him to see the Old Father,” Boris said.
“You did not see the Old Father,” Bran said, correcting him, “neither of us did.”
“Believe me,” Mihai said, with a shudder, “you’re lucky. Now, are we going to get on with this or not?”
“What choice do we have?” the twins chorused.
“None,” he told them, and he wriggled back up to watch the approaching horsemen. The barest hint of a breeze ruffled the feathers that adorned the poles they wore on their backs. Behind him, Mihai heard his own horses stir, struggling against their harnesses and whinnying into their muzzles.
“Better go and calm them down,” one of the twins hissed, so Mihai slithered back down into the hollow. He closed his eyes, and softly began to chant. It worked. The horses grew still. Their patience, however, was a fragile thing. Mihai could feel it, even as he sang to them. They were driven by forces that were more powerful than any Strigany charm, however well sung. It was always the same when this season was upon them.
It was a relief when the cavalry passed them and it was time to go.
“How do you know there’s only one squadron here?” Boris asked.
“Or that another isn’t waiting for us up the road?” Bran added.
“I don’t,” Mihai admitted. “We’ll just have to take the petru’s word for it.”