[Blackhearts 01] - Valnir's Bane

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  “I have only your word for it.”

  “Over that of a peasant. Surely there can be no question.” Erich snatched up his shirt and pulled it on over his steaming chest.

  Reiner turned to the others. “Did any of you see? Did Hals trip him?”

  They all shook their heads.

  He turned to Giano. “Master of the lists?”

  Giano shrugged. “I see nothing. The contest go to Master Hetzau.”

  Erich threw up his hands. “This is preposterous! You’re all in on it! You never intended for it to be a fair contest.” He turned to Reiner. “You are a cheat, sir. The leader of a band of cheats.”

  Reiner clenched his fists, affronted. The one time in his life that he had fought a duel cleanly, and he was accused of cheating anyway. Of course he had little doubt that Hals had tripped Erich, but for once he’d truly had nothing to do with it. He put the blame squarely on Erich’s shoulders. If the fellow hadn’t made himself so disliked by one and all he would have easily won the day. “I’m sorry, old man,” he said to Erich, “But you agreed to abide by the outcome of the fight, and if you didn’t trust the impartiality of the master of the lists you should have said something before we began.”

  “This is intolerable!” Erich cried. “I refuse to submit! We must go again! We must…”

  “Hoy!” came a shout from the far end of the ledge.

  They all turned. Pavel was running toward them, waving. “Kurgan coming!” he called. “A whole bloody column!”

  Reiner and Erich cursed in unison and ran with the others for the cliff edge, their argument for the moment forgotten.

  Pavel pointed down and to the right. “There. See ’em?”

  Reiner squinted into the frosty haze. Coming up the broad southern path, like a gigantic metal snake winding around the curves of the mountain, was a long train of Kurgan, their bronze helmets and steel spearpoints glinting in the late afternoon sun. They were led by a large squadron of barbaric horsemen, resplendent in outlandish armour and huge swords scabbarded over their shoulders. Huge hounds like the ones Reiner and the others had fought in the thorny wood paced alongside their mounted masters. There were also shackled slaves, shuffling in step under the cracking whips of overseers. Wagons loaded with plunder and provisions brought up the rear of the column. They had not yet reached the point where their path joined the narrow path Reiner and the others had climbed, but they were close. Too close.

  “We’ll never make it down in time,” said Hals.

  “We’ll have to hide somewhere,” said Erich.

  “Yes, but where?” asked Reiner.

  Franz frowned. “In the convent? In the chapel?”

  Reiner shook his head. “What if they make camp there? We’d be trapped.”

  “The hidden canyon?” suggested Oskar. “Where we put the horses?”

  “No, lad,” said Hals. “All that fresh meat? Those hounds’ll sniff it out in a second.”

  “If their masters don’t first,” Pavel said with a shiver.

  “We’ll have to go further up,” said Reiner. “Further into the mountains.”

  “Are you mad?” asked Erich. “Run pell mell into unknown territory with an enemy at our back?”

  “Have you another suggestion?”

  “There would be no need for suggestions if we had gone after Lady Magda an hour ago as we should have.”

  “He didn’t ask for complaints, jagger,” muttered Hals.

  Reiner turned away from the cliff and started for the box canyon. “We’d best collect what we can from the packs, but don’t carry too much. We may have occasion to run.”

  The others followed after him. Erich sniffed, disgusted, but followed as well.

  Stepping queasily amongst the scattered horse parts, the company salvaged what they could from the saddlebags, tied the contents up inside their back-and-breasts, and slung them over their shoulders. Pavel and Hals hung theirs off spears they took from the garden of horrors to replace the ones they had lost fighting the Kurgan warriors. As quickly as they could, they started up the wide path that rose from the convent’s ledge and wound further into the mountains. The Chaos column was less than half a league behind them.

  Reiner took some comfort from the fact that, because of the slaves’ slow pace, the column was moving at half march. Reiner’s companions would outdistance them easily, but he was less than heartened to see that on this path too were signs of heavy traffic. What if they met another force coming down and found themselves trapped in the middle? Speed wouldn’t matter then.

  It was less than an hour from nightfall. A cold wind bullied them along and blew high clouds across the lowering sun. The path was alternately bathed in red-gold sunshine or plunged into cold, purple shadows as the trail wound along steep cliffs and through tight defiles. Maddeningly, it didn’t divide. Through all its twists and turns it remained a single line, with no branches or crossings, and though they found a few places where two men could hide, or even three or four, there was no place large enough to conceal them all, or far enough from the path that the hounds wouldn’t scent them.

  After they’d gone a few miles Reiner sent Giano back down the path to see if the Chaos troops had made camp at the convent. He returned just as the sun touched the horizon, mopping the sweat from his brow.

  “They still come,” he said between breaths. “Pass the convent. And more fast than we think. They push slaves hard.”

  Reiner frowned. “Are they gaining on us?”

  “No, no, but best we keep moving, hey?”

  The nine companions marched on into the dwindling twilight. Reiner was becoming nervous. The wind was getting colder, and the clouds thickening. The men were slowing with fatigue. He was slowing. It had been a long day, and they had all received some hard knocks in the fight with the Kurgan. Pavel, still not recovered from his fever, was leaning on Hals and sweating like he was in the desert. Ulf was limping. They needed to find a safe place off the path to make camp.

  Reiner cursed Veirt for dying. The old bear would have found a way out of this mess in an eyeblink. If he hadn’t died, the duel would never have happened. He would have put Erich in his place with a single glare and they would have been off down the mountain long before the Kurgan host came into view.

  Though he put on a brave front for the men, Reiner was in a panic. He didn’t know what he was doing. The only reason he had taken command was that following Erich would have led to disaster. Of course, he seemed to be leading them to disaster at a brisk trot himself.

  Half an hour later, as the purple twilight was thickening into murky blue, the trail finally divided. It had been hugging a steep mountainside, but then widened into a broad, boulder-strewn shoulder that rose at its far end into a razor-backed ridge. The path split around this, the left way swinging wide and angling down the ridge’s outer slope, the right rising up into the cleft ’twixt it and the mountain. To Reiner’s annoyance, both were wide enough to accommodate a marching column. The men examined the ground of each in the dim half light.

  “Plenty of hoofprints up this side,” called Hals.

  “Here too,” said Oskar.

  Reiner groaned. Why couldn’t it be a simple decision? Why couldn’t he say boldly, “This is the one, lads. Clearly this is the path less travelled.” Now he had to guess, take an even-odds gamble. He never made a wager at even odds. Gambling was for fools. Though laymen often called Ranald the god of gamblers, in reality, followers of the Trickster gambled as little as possible. Rigging the odds in one’s favour was a holy duty, a sacrament. One never entered a game of chance without an edge of some kind: loaded dice, marked cards, an accomplice. Here there was no way to force an advantage. Here there was no mark to gull, no extra ace to palm. He had to roll clean dice with fate like some rustic peasant, and hope.

  “What do you think, lads?” he asked. “Which way looks more promising?”

  “Both the same,” said Giano shrugging.

  “This one might be a little spars
e,” said Hals uncertainly. “Then again it might not.”

  “What if we wait at the fork?” said Franz. “See which way they mean to go, then go the other.”

  The company turned to stare at him. Reiner gaped. It was a good idea.

  “But they’ll see us.” said Oskar.

  “No. No they won’t,” said Reiner, heart pounding with newfound hope. “They’ll have torches by now. We’ll stay dark, invisible. And the path splits early enough that we’ll know which way they’re heading long before they’re upon us.” He patted Franz on the shoulder. “Good thinking, lad.”

  The boy beamed.

  Reiner looked back down the trail. It was so dark now he could hardly see five yards. “We’ll sit right here. Wear your cloaks over your packs, and wrap your swords. We don’t want any steel reflecting their torchlight. Might as well have a bite to eat while we wait.”

  They huddled together at the blunt tip of the ridge, gnawing on nearly frozen bread and sipping from canteens they had to bang against rocks in order to break the skins of ice that stoppered them. Fast-moving clouds nearly filled the sky. The rising moons were only rarely visible. Finally, almost an hour after full dark, the Kurgan host arrived. The men heard them before they saw them, a faint rumble like a far-off avalanche that never stopped: the sound of boots and hooves on stone, chains dragging through gravel, the crack of whips and the guttural marching cadences of the raider infantry.

  By the time the men put away their food and made ready to move, a dim orange glow began to rim the path where it curved around the mountain. The glow grew brighter and the rumble louder until at last the Kurgan column appeared around the bend. Three slaves on long leashes came first. They held aloft torches on tall poles that cast a baleful light upon the Kurgan horsemen that followed them. Reiner swallowed as he saw them. He heard Franz moan beside him.

  Though it was difficult to judge scale at this distance, all of the mounted marauders looked enormous, larger even than the monstrous men they had faced in the convent, but in the centre of the first rank rode a veritable giant. Mounted on a barded warhorse that made the largest destrier Reiner had ever seen look like a pony, was a knight—if a daemon-worshipping northern vandal could be given so noble a title—in full plate armour, lacquered a deep blood red and chased with bronze accents. His head was entirely encased in an elaborate helmet, built to look like a dragon’s head. The resemblance was heightened by the two double-headed axes that rose from behind his massive shoulders like steel wings. Each must have been as tall as a man. The very sight of him turned Reiner’s blood to water. The knight seemed to radiate fear like a stove radiates heat. Reiner wanted to run and hide, to curl up and weep.

  His retinue was only less fearsome by comparison. Had the evil knight not been there, the marauders alone would have been quite enough to make Reiner quake in his boots. They were massive, muscular northmen, most in horned helmets and armour of ringmail, leather and the occasional gorget or breastplate. Some rode bare-chested, their sinewy arms and knotted torsos seemingly impervious to cold. But all had the same fell look. Their eyes were hooded and hidden. Not a glint of light reflected from them, not even those who wore no covering helmet, and they stared dead ahead, looking neither left nor right, though Reiner’s skin crawled with the feeling that their awareness was examining every part of him like the beam of some glowing eye. Every fibre of his being told him to run.

  “Wait for it, lads,” he whispered, as jauntily as he could manage. “Wait for it.”

  The horsemen continued pouring around the curve five abreast until more than a hundred rode behind the knight, then came foot soldiers, a ragged group who walked rather than marched into the valley.

  “Look at ’em,” sneered Hals. “Not one of ’em in step. No discipline.”

  Just as the ranks of slaves began shuffling into view and the head of the column had reached the widening shoulder, one of the fell knight’s lieutenants peeled off from the squad of riders and faced about. As the others rode on, he raised his hand and began bellowing orders in a bestial voice.

  “Do they set up camp?” asked Erich uneasily.

  Reiner hoped that it was true, for it would give the party some time to find a way around them, but he wasn’t so lucky. There was movement in the ranks: captains shouting at their companies, overseers roaring at their slaves, wagon masters calling to each other, and for a moment all seemed chaos and confusion.

  Hals squinted at the reforming column. “What are they about? Oskar, you’ve got the eyes. What are they doing?”

  “They are… They are…” said the artilleryman as he tried to make it out.

  But by then it was clear to everyone what the Kurgan force was doing. As the mounted lieutenant stood in his saddle, motioning and shouting, the column began to split to his left and right like a river breaking around an island, some going one way, some the other.

  Reiner’s heart sunk. He groaned. “The cursed heathen. They’re splitting up. They’re taking both paths.”

  “Myrmidia, protect us,” said Ulf.

  Oskar was whimpering, high in his throat.

  Reiner wanted to cut and run, but he forced his fear down with both hands and remained where he was.

  Erich turned on Franz. “Foolish boy, we could have been far away by now. Now they are upon us.”

  “Lay off him, von Eisenberg,” said Reiner. “He suggested it. I ordered it.”

  “But which way do we go?” asked Gustaf, querulously.

  “Whichever way he doesn’t,” muttered Hals, and no one had to ask who “he” was. They could feel the fell knight’s presence growing stronger as he neared.

  “We go the way the slaves go,” said Reiner, relieved to be able to give an order he had some confidence in. “They’ll slow the train.”

  The slaves went right, and the company breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief, for the red knight and most of his retinue had angled left, followed by half of the foot soldiers. A smaller company of horsemen led the slaves and the rest of the infantry.

  “Right, lads,” said Reiner, letting the tension out of his shoulders. “That’s decided. Off we go.”

  The party stood and hurried up the right-hand path into the dark cleft. No, thought Reiner. Though he hated to admit it, they didn’t hurry. They fled.

  NINE

  Trapped Like Rats

  Reiner and the rest ran up the path in almost total darkness, tripping and cursing, but not daring to light a torch. When the wind-whipped clouds allowed it, the light of Morrslieb and Mannslieb illuminated the mountain tops, but the two moons hadn’t yet risen high enough to shine down into the tight crevasse through which the company stumbled. They might have passed any number of branching paths, but they were invisible, blending into the dark basalt of the cliff sides.

  All around Reiner came the hoarse breathing of the men. He recognised Franz’s light quick breaths, Pavel’s thready wheeze, Ulf’s deep inhalations. They were exhausted. Waiting for the Chaos army had refreshed them a little, but it had been no replacement for sleep. They must stop soon. Even in the midst of their panicked flight, Reiner felt his eyelids drooping. It was pitch dark anyway. He might as well walk with his eyes closed.

  After that Reiner was often unsure whether he was walking or sleeping—whether he was walking in a dream, or dreaming that he was walking. He drifted in and out of consciousness so often that he had no sense of the passage of time. He had no idea how long they had been travelling when, just as they topped a rise in the path, the steep ridges that had hemmed them in for so long opened away from them and they found themselves standing on the lip of a deep valley carpeted with a thousand points of light.

  Reiner frowned sleepily. The lights looked like stars, but stars belonged in the sky. Maybe it was a lake.

  “Torches,” said Oskar.

  Reiner shook his head, clearing the fog from his brain. They were torches.

  He stepped back into the shadows, heart thudding, and surveyed the valley. The others d
id the same. As if on cue, the clouds parted again and the two moons shone down on the scene.

  The curving walls of the valley were rusty orange stone, and terraced like some giant’s staircase. There were holes in the walls on each level, and odd ramshackle structures clinging precariously to the steps: little shacks, wooden sluice runs, scaffolding—except where one of the terraces had collapsed and slid in a heap to the valley floor. The furthest third of the valley was walled off by thick stone battlements, beyond which the party could just make out a confusion of low buildings built around the glowing orange mouth of what looked like a giant cave. But the sight that drew all their eyes was what was in front of the battlements: a sprawling camp of leather tents and blazing campfires, wagons and horses, and laughing, drinking, fighting barbarians.

  Kurgan.

  “Sigmar preserve us,” whimpered Oskar.

  Reiner clamped a hand over the artilleryman’s mouth, for he had suddenly noticed, not twenty paces to their left, a stone watch tower carved out of the valley wall. Oskar grunted in protest. The others turned. Reiner pointed to the tower. There were no torches visible, but Reiner was sure he’d seen a hulking figure moving above the crenellations. He motioned the others to retreat. When they were out of sight, Reiner slumped against the rocky wall and closed his eyes. The others gathered around him.

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “Well, we’re in a spot, and no mistake.”

  “Trapped like rats,” quavered Oskar.

  “Kurgan in front of us,” said Ulf.

  “Kurgan behind us,” said Pavel.

  “Kurgan up our bloody fundaments,” growled Hals.

  Reiner chuckled mirthlessly. “I suppose, Erich, this is where you tell me ‘I told you so’.”

  There was no answer. Reiner looked up. He didn’t see the blond knight. “Where’s von Eisenberg?”

  The others looked around. Erich wasn’t with them.

  Reiner frowned. “Any of you hear him drop back?”

  Everyone shook their heads.