“If you were in Altdorf you must know my cousin Viscount Norrich Oberholt. He was trying to become a Knight Panther. Damned fine rider. Spent a lot of time at the Plume and Pennant.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t mix much with the orders. I was at university.”
Erich made a face. “University? Gads! I had enough learning from my tutor. Were you studying to be a priest?”
“Literature, when I studied at all. Mostly I was just there to escape Draeholt.”
“Eh? What’s wrong with Draeholt? Excellent hunting there. Bagged a boar there once.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Damned fine animal. I say, your name is Hetzau? I believe I met your father on a Draeholt hunt once. Jolly old fellow.”
Reiner winced. “Oh yes, he’s always at his jolliest killing the lesser orders.”
There was a rustle in the dead grass beside the road. Giano instantly unslung his crossbow and fired. A rabbit bolted out of hiding and sprinted across their march. Before Giano could do more than cry out in disgust, Franz raised his bow from his shoulders and an arrow from his quiver and fired in a single smooth motion. The rabbit turned a cartwheel and flopped dead in the melting snow, a clothyard shaft between his shoulder blades.
The entire party turned and looked at the boy with newfound respect. Even Erich nodded curtly. “Neat shooting, that. Lad would make a good beater.”
Franz hopped lightly off his horse, removed the arrow and handed the rabbit to Giano, who had three more hanging from his pommel that he had shot earlier. “One more for the stew,” he said with a smirk.
“Grazie, boy,” said Giano. “Much thank yous.” He added the coney to his brace.
As Franz climbed back on his horse again, Reiner leaned in to Erich. “Care to bet on who pots the next one?”
Erich pursed his lips. “I never wager, except on horses. I say, have you seen the racers Count Schlaeger is breeding down at Helmgart? Damned fine runners.”
And on and on it went. Reiner groaned. Here he was, out in the world, freed from prison, his neck spared—at least temporarily—from the noose. But was he allowed to enjoy it? No. Apparently Sigmar had a nasty sense of humour. Erich was talking about his father’s annual hunt ball now. It was going to be a long trip.
Veirt finally called a halt in the lee of a low cliff just before sunset and the men fell to making camp. Reiner found it curious that the men all found roles for themselves without any apparent communication. Pavel and Hals groaned about how sore they were from riding while they fetched water from a nearby stream and hunted for wild carrots and dandelion leaves to add to the stew. Reiner saw to the horses. Ulf erected Magda’s tent and then assisted the others with theirs. Franz and Oskar collected wood and started the fire. Gustaf flayed and deboned the rabbits with an intensity Reiner found disturbing, while Giano seasoned the stew and talked endlessly about how much better the food was in Tilea.
The stew was delicious, if a bit garlicky for Imperial tastes, and they slurped it down eagerly as they hunched close around the fire.
“Draw lots for tents,” said Veirt between mouthfuls. “I’ll not have anyone pulling rank or any fighting over who tents with who. Yer all scum to me.”
The men made their marks on leaves and put them in a helmet. There were five tents: a fancy one for Lady Magda, a small one for Captain Veirt, and three standard-issue cavalry tents, which slept four uncomfortably, as the old barracks joke went, so the nine men could sleep three to a tent. Luxury. But when the helmet passed to Franz, he passed it on without adding a lot.
“Can’t write your name, lad?” asked Veirt.
“I’ll sleep alone,” said Franz.
Heads came up all around the fire.
Veirt scowled. “You’ll sleep with the others. There’s no spare tent.”
“I’ll tent under my cloak.” He looked straight into the fire.
Reiner smirked. “The army ain’t all inverts, boyo.”
“It only takes one.”
“Soldier,” said Veirt, with soft menace. “Men who sleep alone tend to be found missing in the morning. Sometimes they run. Sometimes something takes them. I will allow neither. I need all the men I have for this goose chase. You…”
“Captain, please,” said Hals. “Let him sleep alone. The last thing any of us needs is some excitable lad with a hair trigger cutting our throats for rolling over.”
A chorus of “ayes” echoed from around the fire. Veirt shrugged. It seemed that Franz’s stock with the company, which had risen after his display of bowmanship, had fallen precipitously once again.
When the lots were drawn—with a blank leaf holding Franz’s place—Reiner shared a tent with Pavel and Ulf. Hals, Giano and Oskar had another, and Erich and Gustaf had the third tent to themselves. Veirt took first watch, and the rest bedded down immediately, near dropping from their night and day in the saddle. Still, it took Reiner a while to get to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about what an odd lot of madmen and malcontents the company was. He couldn’t understand why Valdenheim had entrusted them with such an important mission, and with the life of a woman he obviously held dear. Why hadn’t he dispatched a squadron of knights to be her escort?
Reiner at last drifted off into fitful dreams without having found a satisfactory answer to his questions.
THREE
In The Doghouse
In the middle of the third day of their journey, with the ground rising beneath them and the Middle Mountains looming above, Pavel and Hals began to look about them with increased interest.
“This is the road to Ferlangen, or I’m a goblin,” said Hals.
“And there’s the Three Hags,” said Pavel, pointing to a trio of mountains in the distance that looked from this angle like three hunched old women. “My dad’s farm ain’t half a day south.”
Hals sniffed the air. “I knew we was home, just by breathing. Lady of Peace, I could swear I smell my mother’s pork and cabbage cooking in the pot right now.”
Gustaf chuckled unpleasantly and spoke for the first time that day. “Don’t get your hopes up, yokel. It’s more likely your mother cooking in the pot.”
“Y’filthy clot!” cried Hals, trying clumsily to turn his horse toward Gustaf. “You’ll take that back or I’ll have yer guts for garters!”
Captain Veirt interposed his horse between the men before Reiner even noticed him moving. “Stand down, pikeman,” he barked at Hals, then wheeled to face Gustaf. “And you, leech. If you open yer trap only for that sort of garbage, yer better off leaving it shut.” He stood up in his stirrups and glowered around at the whole troop. “You’ll not lack for fighting before we’re done, I guarantee it. But if any man wants more than what’s coming to him, come see me. I’ll show you yer own spine. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly captain,” said Gustaf, turning his horse away.
Hals nodded, head lowered. “Aye, captain.”
“Right then,” said Veirt. “Ride on. We’ve twenty more miles to make today.”
At dusk they rode through a ruined town. The houses, taverns and shops were nothing but blackened sticks. Drifts of ash-blackened snow clung to crumbled stone walls. Pavel and Hals stared around in blank dismay.
“This is Draetau,” said Pavel. “My cousin lives in Draetau.”
“Lived,” said Gustaf.
“We sell our pigs in the market down there,” said Hals, pointing down a cross street. There was no longer any market.
Pavel trembled with rage and wiped at his eyes. “The heathen bastards. Filthy, daemon worshipping swine.”
Beyond the edge of the town they saw an orange glow through a stand of trees and heard faint cries and the clash of arms.
“Weapons out!” barked Veirt, and drew his sword. The men followed suit. Giano wound his crossbow and Franz nocked an arrow on his string. Reiner checked that his pistols were primed and cocked.
“Von Eisenberg, Hetzau,” called Veirt. “With the lady.”
Erich and Reiner jogged up
so that they flanked Lady Magda. Veirt rode directly before her. Through a gap in the trees they could see that a small cluster of farmhouses were burning. The silhouettes of huge men with horns—whether sprouting from their helmets or growing from their heads it was impossible to tell—ran through the flames, chasing smaller silhouettes. Others drove off sheep and cattle. A few carried human prizes. Reiner and the others could hear the thin shrieks of women over the crackle of fire.
Pavel and Hals kicked their horses awkwardly forward. “Captain,” said Hals. “Those are our people. We can’t just…”
“No,” said Veirt grimly. “We’ve a job to do. Ride on.” But he didn’t look happy about it.
Erich coughed. “Captain, for once I agree with the pike. The village isn’t much out of our line of march, and we might…”
“I said no!” bellowed Veirt, so they rode on. But before they had gone another quarter mile, Veirt struck his leg with his gloved fist. “This is all the fault of those mealy-mouthed fools who surround the Emperor and fill his ears with cowardice disguised as caution. We are too extended, they say. The treasury is depleted, they say. We cannot afford to prolong the war. The fools! They can’t afford not to!”
The squad looked at him, surprised. From their short association with him, they knew Veirt as a taciturn man, who kept his emotions to himself, but here he was raging like tap-room orator.
“It wasn’t enough to push the hordes beyond our borders and into the mountains, and then return as if the mission were accomplished. It is as Baron Albrecht says. We must destroy them utterly. Otherwise it will be as you see—a little raid here, a little raid there, with our mothers and sisters never truly safe, the Empire never truly sovereign. Unless we want to endlessly fight for land we have called our own for centuries, we must seek out the barbarians in their own lairs and kill them to the last man, woman and child.”
“Hear hear,” said Erich. “Well said. But then…”
“No,” said Veirt. “The relic Baron Albrecht has commanded us to recover is more important. It could turn the tide at last. It could mean the end of the northern curse for all time. Once m’lord Albrecht has it, he and his brother Manfred will be able to retake Nordbergbruche, their ancestral home, from the Chaos filth that stole it while m’lords were fighting in the east. Then it will become a bastion against the scum that hide in the mountains, and Valnir’s Bane will be the spear with which the Empire will at last drive out…”
“Captain,” said Lady Magda, sharply. “This is a secret mission.”
Veirt looked up at her and visibly composed himself. “Forgive me, lady. I let my tongue get away from me.”
Veirt returned his horse to her side and they got under way once more.
“Quite a speech,” muttered Reiner, dropping back a bit.
“Oh yes,” said Hals, grinning. “Old Veirt’s a firebreather all right.”
“You served under him?”
Pavel shook his head. “Would that we had. There’s one who wouldn’t run in battle.”
Hals laughed. “Not him. That’s why he’s here, trying to win his way back into Albrecht’s good graces.”
“Vent’s in the doghouse too?” asked Reiner, surprised.
“Worse than the doghouse. His neck’s on the block. Direct disobedience of orders,” said Pavel.
“He was under the command of Albrecht’s brother, Manfred, at the battle of Vandengart. Manfred told him to hold his position,” continued Hals, “but Veirt saw a troop of gunners being destroyed by some horrible norther beasties and couldn’t stand it. He charged. Cost Manfred the battle.”
“Lost him nearly a hundred men,” added Pavel.
“But Veirt’s pikes never broke,” said Hals proudly. “Slaughtered every last one of those nightmares. There’s a captain.”
“Aye,” said Pavel.
Reiner chuckled. “A squadron of the condemned led by the condemned.”
“It’s nothing to laugh at,” sniffed Erich. “I had no idea. The man’s cashiered.”
Reiner spotted more torches moving through the fields just north of the road. “Captain. On your right.”
Veirt looked where he pointed and cursed under his breath. “Right. We turn west. Von Eisenberg, on point.”
The company reluctantly turned off the road. With a last, longing look over his shoulder at the marauders, Erich nudged his horse forward until he was fifty paces ahead. They rode through fields and sparse woods in a large half-circle until the Kurgan torches were out of sight and all they could see of the burning farms was a faint orange glow on the underside of the low-hanging clouds.
At last Veirt turned them north again. A long finger of wood lay between them and the road. Veirt called Erich back until he rode only a few yards ahead, gave him a slotted lantern which emitted a narrow wedge of light but hid its flame from prying eyes, and they began to pick their way through the wood.
Though narrow, the centre of the strip of woods became thick and tangled with undergrowth, and their progress was reduced to a walk. The horses pushed through the brush as if breasting through a stream, and it was necessary to hack at the branches that dangled overhead to avoid being dragged off their mounts.
“Captain,” said Erich. “May I suggest we go about and circle this briar patch?”
Veirt nodded. “Turn around. Back the way we…”
“Captain,” said Lady Magda. “I believe my horse’s hoof is caught. I cannot turn.”
Veirt grunted and sheathed his sword in his saddle-mounted scabbard. “A moment, lady.” He dismounted, took Erich’s lantern, and squatted by Lady Magda’s horse. After a moment he stood. “Urquart. Her hoofs wedged between two roots. I need your strength.”
The big engineer dismounted and joined Veirt. As they hauled at the roots, Oskar’s head snapped up. “Do you hear something?” he asked tremulously.
The others fell still and listened. There was something, almost lost in the creaking of leather and shifting of horses—a rhythmic murmuring like a tide over a pebble beach, like… breathing. They looked into the blackness of the woods. On all sides of them, glowing yellow eyes reflected their lantern light.
Veirt cursed and waded for his horse, trying to get to his sword. The men drew their weapons and tugged on their reins, attempting to settle their horses, which were shying into each other nervously as they scented the hidden threat.
“Protect the lady!” called Veirt.
A horse whinnied.
Reiner looked back. A black shape, the size of a wild boar, but leaner, was pulling down Franz’s horse, its teeth and claws deep in the poor beast’s haunches. The horse crashed on its side in the undergrowth and Franz was thrown clear. Before Reiner could even call the boy’s name, more of the black shapes attacked, roaring and howling.
Reiner and Erich pulled their pistols from their holsters. Oskar reached for his handgun.
“No guns!” called Veirt as he retrieved his sword. “Their masters might hear!”
“Masters?” thought Reiner. Boars had no masters. Then he saw that one of the charging monsters wore a studded collar. They were hounds! But such hounds he had never seen: huge, deformed things with twisted, overmuscled limbs and fat, fleshy goitres bulging from their distorted faces. Their fanged jaws dripped with yellow mucus.
Erich spurred his horse forward and took a hound’s charge on his spear. The impact wasn’t strong enough to kill the beast, for both hound and horse were slowed by the tangle of undergrowth. The hound twisted and fought, clawing and biting at the spear. Reiner rode up beside it and jabbed down at its back with his sword. It was like trying to pierce a saddle. The muscle was nearly as dense as wood. Even its matted fur was hard to penetrate. Reiner raised his sword again and stabbed down with both hands.
Behind him, Pavel and Hals jumped off their horses and faced a charging hound on foot like the pikemen they were. They planted their spear-butts and took the leaping brute in the chest.
Giano fired his crossbow at another. It caught the
hound in the eye. The beast howled and whipped its head around, trying to dislodge the annoyance. The bolt stayed put. The hound stopped and attempted to wipe the bolt away on the ground and instead drove it further into its skull. It vomited blood and died. Giano cranked his crossbow for another shot.
Ulf swung his huge maul at a slavering hound. He hit it square in the shoulder, knocking the thing flat, but overbalanced and fell himself.
Another beast leapt at Oskar’s horse. Oskar flailed at it with his sword, but his horse, rearing and kicking, did more damage.
Captain Veirt shouldered through the brush toward the bedevilled artilleryman.
Reiner finally forced his blade through his hound’s ribs and found its heart. The thing shuddered and slumped beneath him. He pulled his sword free and surveyed the battle, looking for Franz. There was a swirl of movement beyond the boy’s horse. A hound leaping and bucking. There was something on its back. Franz! The boy was riding the beast, one hand on its collar, the other stabbing it over and over again with a dagger while the beast snapped at him over its shoulder. Reiner had never seen anyone look so frightened. The boy’s expression might have seemed comical had his situation not been so desperate.
Gustaf was closest to the boy, but though he had his sword out and watched alertly, he made no move to help. Reiner cursed and kicked his horse toward the boy, but the animal was entangled in the brush and was having difficulty turning. Damn this wood! He jumped from the saddle and pushed toward the boy on foot, taking briar scratches with every step.
Erich withdrew his spear from the beast Reiner had killed, but sought no new target, instead holding his place at Lady Magda’s side.
Pavel’s spear snapped under the weight of the beast he and Hals had stopped, and he went down beneath it. Hals bellowed and stabbed the hound in the side, trying to drive it off his friend. Pavel threw his arms up to protect his face. The beast clawed his arm.
[Blackhearts 01] - Valnir's Bane Page 3