[Blackhearts 01] - Valnir's Bane

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  Reiner was too angry to sit. He paced back and forth between the hessian sacks.

  “Damn Manfred,” he growled. “Damn Karl Franz. Damn the whole bloody Empire! Here we are, a bunch of villains and ne’er-do-wells, going against our nature and our self interest to do them a good turn, to save them from not one, but two grave dangers and do they thank us? Do they heap riches at our feet, feed us oranges and ambrosia? No! They ignore our warnings and fit us for the noose again.” He kicked a pickle barrel. “Well, I for one have finished playing at heroes. Chaos can take Karl Franz, Count Manfred and all the other high-born fools. From now on I am no longer a citizen of the Empire. I will be free of its grim pieties and stifling stoicism. From now on, I will be a citizen of the world. Who needs Altdorf when I have Marienburg, Tilea, Estalia, Araby, even far Cathay and all the mysteries of the unknown east? I will drink deep of freedom and call for more.” He turned to his companions, fire in his eyes. “Who’s with me? Who wants to walk a free man in a place where the hammer brand means nothing?”

  The others stared at him, blinking.

  “That was quite a speech,” said Hals. “Almost as good as the one y’gave us about being homesick if we left the Empire, when you wanted us to stay with you.”

  “Which one’s the truth?” asked Pavel.

  Reiner frowned. He’d forgotten the other speech. “Er, why, both. I don’t say I won’t be homesick. I will. Altdorf is where my heart is, but as the Empire has turned its back on us, I will turn my back on it. And I’ll be damned if I’ll be miserable doing it. I’ll go laughing, and to the depths with them all.”

  Hals grinned. “I hope y’never try to sell me a cow. I bet I’d end up giving ye my farm to buy it.”

  “He’s right all the same,” said Pavel. “The jaggers have done us down. We owe ’em no favours. I’m in.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Hals. “Me as well.”

  “And me,” chimed in Franka.

  “You come to Tilea?” Giano grinned. “I bring you my home. Cook you Tilean feasting, hey?”

  “I certainly don’t want to stay here,” said Oskar. “I think they mean to hang us.”

  “Good lads,” said Reiner. “So where shall it be first? We’ll need to make some money before we travel too far.”

  “I vote for Marienburg,” said Hals. “They speak our language. They pay good gold for willing pikes, and…” he nodded knowingly at Reiner. “I hear their card-rooms rival Altdorf s.”

  Reiner smirked. “Hardly But it is a port city. From there we can go anywhere. Are we agreed?”

  The others nodded.

  “Excellent.” Reiner looked around. “Then we should find a way out of this tent.” He crossed to the tent flap and peeked out. The two guards who were meant to be guarding them stood well away from the opening, craning their necks, trying to see over the intervening tents to the field of battle. The camp seemed otherwise deserted, doused campfires smouldering and pennants flapping limply in a fitful breeze.

  Reiner turned to his companions. “Well, I don’t think we’ll have much trouble…”

  A hair-raising noise interrupted him. It was the sound of five thousand savage throats raised in unison, roaring a barbaric war cry. The ground shook beneath Reiner’s feet, and the muffled reports of cannon buffeted the tent.

  “They’ve charged us,” said Franka. “It’s begun.”

  Pavel and Hals were rooted to the spot. Giano’s eyes darted around, anxious. Oskar flinched.

  A second roar answered the first and the ground shook again. The noise rose to a continuous low rumble, pierced with shouts and trumpet blasts.

  Reiner peeked through the tent flap again. Their two guards had almost disappeared around the mess tent. Their whole posture said that they longed to be supporting their fellows, not stuck far behind the lines.

  Reiner turned back. “Under the back wall. Our jailers will pay us no mind.” He paused as he saw Pavel and Hals’ faces. They were stricken and grim. “Have you changed your mind so soon?”

  The pikemen were tortured with indecision. It was obvious that the idea of leaving their countrymen to fight the Chaos troops alone was odious to them, but at the same time, their sense of honour and justice had been wounded.

  At last Hals shrugged. “After the way they treated us? Let Chaos take them. I care not.”

  “Nor do I,” said Pavel, but Reiner could tell he felt uncomfortable saying it.

  “Then now is the time,” Reiner crossed to the back wall of the tent and began shifting sacks of flour out of the way. The others joined in. There was little danger of discovery. The air was filled with the sound of cannon fire, screaming horses, and the clash of arms.

  When the sacks were cleared they pulled up on the bottom of the canvas wall until they loosened a tent peg, then wormed through the gap. Reiner stood watch behind the tent as the others squirmed out behind him. They were close to the south edge of the camp, in the stem of the Y-shaped valley. The sounds of the battle came from the north.

  “Now,” said Reiner. “Back to the road we came in on and west to Marienburg.”

  “Wait,” said Giano, dragging a flour sack out of the tent. “Prepare this time.” The sack had been emptied of most of its flour and filled with various dry goods. He grinned at them as he slung it over his shoulder and gestured around at the nearby tents. “Store is open.”

  Reiner smirked. “You haven’t a clear idea of the difference ’twixt mine and thine, do you, Tilean?”

  He shrugged. “If they want, they would take with them.”

  Hals and Pavel scowled at him, but they joined in the hunt for weapons, clothes, armour, packs and cooking utensils. There was almost no one in the camp, only a few camp-followers and cooks—easily avoided, and though the soldiers had taken their main weapons to the battle, they had left all manner of swords and daggers, bows and spears behind. Reiner found a brace of pistols with powder and shot in a knight’s tent. Oskar found a caisson full of handguns and took one, though he found it difficult to load with his left arm in a sling. Within the space of half an hour they were almost as well kitted out as they had been when Albrecht first freed them.

  They assembled at the edge of camp, dressed in the colours of half a dozen companies, weapons bristling from belts and scabbards, and bulging packs over their shoulders.

  “Now are we ready?” asked Reiner.

  His companions nodded, though Pavel, Hals and Franka looked a trifle uncomfortable to be wearing gear stolen from their fellow soldiers.

  “Then we march.”

  They followed the path that had led them to the camp not two hours before. They were still dead tired, but their confinement had allowed them something resembling rest, and they were at least alert.

  They had almost reached the village at the south end of the valley when Oskar pointed over the burned out buildings. “Look.”

  Winding down the hill beyond the town was a column of marching men, spearpoints and helms aglitter in the morning sun. The head of the column was hidden within the town, but there was no question as to whose army they must be.

  “Albrecht,” said Pavel.

  “Aye,” said Reiner. “Come, we’ll take cover ’til they pass.”

  They hurried to a blackened barn on the outskirts of the town and hid inside it. Almost instantly they heard the tramp of marching feet and the clop of hooves. They stepped to the walls and peered through the charred boards as the head of the column emerged from the town. First to appear were Albrecht, Erich and Lady Magda, leading a company of more than a hundred knights. Erich rode between the baron and the abbess on a white charger clad in shining barding, but though Albrecht was splendid in his dark blue armour and a scarlet-plumed helm, and the company of knights was a magnificent sight that should have filled the hearts of men of the Empire with pride, the sight of the blood-red banner that Erich held aloft, couched in his lance socket, killed all emotions except an all pervading dread.

  It was awesome and awful to look upon, slappi
ng thickly against its pike, less like heavy cloth than a square of flesh cut from some umber giant, and though Reiner couldn’t take his eyes off it, it was at the same time hard to look upon directly, for it radiated gloom and dread like a black sun. He felt at once physically sick, and at the same time compelled to join the column of men that followed it. Its power was a hundredfold greater than it had been in the crypt. Held by a hero at the head of an army, it had acquired at last its full allure. It tugged at Reiner like a magnet, and as he tore his eyes from it and looked around at his companions he could see that it affected them the same way. Pavel and Hals white-knuckled their spears. Franka and Giano stared, grimacing. Oskar was standing, stepping out from cover.

  “Get down, you fool,” hissed Reiner, pulling the artilleryman back by his jerkin. He was glad of the distraction. Anything to keep him from looking at the banner again.

  “Myrmidia,” breathed Franka. “Look at them. The poor damned souls.”

  Reiner reluctantly peered again through the wall. The knights had emerged entirely from the town and now companies of pike, sword and gun were marching out after them. In a way it was the most ordinary sight in the world, soldiers of the Empire on the march—simple farmers, millers, blacksmiths and merchants taking up arms in a time of war as they had done for centuries. But there was something about them, something almost indefinable, that was repulsive. They marched well enough, almost perfectly in fact, all in step, ranks dressed neat enough to warm a sergeant major’s heart, but there was something about their gait, something loose and boneless, that reminded of Reiner of sleepwalkers. They stared straight ahead, jaws slack, eyes glazed. Not one of them looked left or right, or squinted at the sun to judge the time, or talked to his companions, or scratched his backside. Their eyes seemed fixed on the banner before them. They hardly seemed to blink.

  “Zombies,” said Giano, making a warding sign.

  “The banner has enslaved them,” said Franka, shuddering.

  Reiner nodded. “There is no longer any doubt of Albrecht’s intentions. He comes not as his brother’s saviour, but as his slayer.” He whistled out a breath. “I’m glad we will be nowhere near when Manfred gets pinched ’twixt that hammer and the Kurgan anvil.”

  The last of the mindless troops trailed out of the town. Reiner shouldered his pack and stood, but the others hesitated, gazing after the receding column.

  “Captain,” said Hals, uncertainly. “We can’t just…” He trailed off.

  “What do you mean?” asked Reiner.

  Hals scratched his neck and made a face. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Captain. I know what I said before. I care not a fig what happens to Manfred. I hope he and Albrecht tear each other to pieces, but those lads back there in the camp…”

  “And the ones in the column…” said Franka.

  “Aye,” continued Hals. “Them too. Enslaved or not, they’re our mates. It’s them who’ll be pinched ’twixt hammer and anvil. It’s them what will die in their thousands.”

  “It ain’t right to see Empire men fighting one another,” added Pavel. “Brother against brother. It’s wrong.”

  “This is no war to protect Empire lands,” said Franka. “Those men go to die so that Lady Magda can be a countess. So that Albrecht can take from his brother what he was not given at birth.”

  Reiner swallowed a curse. He didn’t like where this was going. “So, do you say that we go and die as well? What side do you suggest we fight on?”

  “I say that we do what Captain Veirt was trying to do when he died,” said Franka. “Destroy the banner.”

  Pavel and Hals nodded emphatically.

  “Maybe we get our rewards then, hey?” said Giano.

  “But what about freedom?” asked Reiner. “What about Marienburg and Tilea and all the rest? What about drinking the world dry?”

  The others shrugged uncomfortably. Even Giano wouldn’t meet his eye.

  “Sorry, captain,” said Hals at last.

  Reiner groaned and looked longingly toward the path that rose up out of the valley. On the far side of that hill was the road to freedom. He had only to climb it and Albrecht, Manfred and Lady Magda would be mere unpleasant memories. What did he care about the fates of a few thousand peasants? It wasn’t he who was leading them to their doom. All he wanted was a quiet life, free from evil banners, power-hungry nuns and mad barons. All he wanted was to be back in Altdorf or, if he must, Marienburg or Tilea, parting fools from their money by day and dallying with delicious doxies by night.

  And yet…

  And yet, though he was reluctant to admit it, the banner and the mindless marchers who followed it had sickened him as well. He had always had a problem with authority. That, more than any faintness of heart was the reason he had done his best to avoid serving in the army. He valued his individuality too much to obey orders without questioning them. He knew too many noble idiots—his beloved father came to mind, not to mention Erich von Eisenberg—to think that a lord was always right just because he was a lord. The idea of some eldritch relic that could remove one’s ability to question an order, that took away one’s individuality entirely and made of one a mindless drone, enslaved to the will of one’s leader, filled him with outrage.

  The banner was an abomination. He could imagine the whole Empire falling under its sway. A whole nation blindly following the whims of its leader, taking over its neighbours until there were no more Marienburgs or Tileas to escape to, until at last Reiner too marched along with all the others, just one more sheep happily following the butcher to the slaughterhouse.

  “Right,” he said suddenly. “On your feet. We’ll need to cut wide to avoid their line of march, then hurry back on the double to beat them there.”

  Pavel and Hals let out great sighs of relief. Franka smiled. Giano nodded. Oskar looked upset, but fell in line with the others as they started across the muddy stubblefields north of the village.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Claws Of The Manticore

  The journey cross-country was harder than they expected. Climbing fieldstone walls and hunting for openings in high hedges slowed them down, and they were still as sore as they had been the evening before. Hals winced with each step, not just from the pain of his broken leg, but from the raw skin under his arm from the rubbing of his makeshift crutch.

  Reiner shook his head as he surveyed them. What chance had the likes of them to destroy the banner? They would most likely have to fight Albrecht to do it, not to mention Erich and a host of knights. It was ridiculous. They were like beggars planning to storm Middenheim.

  They lost sight of Albrecht’s column as they stole back through Manfred’s deserted camp and came at last upon the battlefield. From their position far behind Manfred’s lines it was difficult to see anything, just a confusion of men and horses and horned helmets appearing and disappearing through drifting streamers of smoke. Reiner couldn’t tell which, if any, were Albrecht’s men or if they had even arrived yet.

  “We need a better view,” he said. The steep hills to the right of the camp seemed a good vantage point. “Up there.”

  Hals groaned, but with Pavel assisting him he gamely limped up the slope behind the others. After a while, they found a goat path that made the climb easier and led them along the side of the hill to a spot where the battle was laid out before them like a painting.

  They stood facing west above the branching of the Y-shaped valley. Nordbergbruche castle was a little to their north, rising from the promontory between the angled arms of the Y. Manfred’s camp was to the south, well within the stem of the Y. From the armies’ current positions, it was easy for Reiner to picture how the battle had begun. The Chaos troops had spilled out of the castle’s gate and formed a long line that spanned the valley just below the branching arms. Manfred had lined up to face them in the mouth of the stem. He was outnumbered two to one, and was downhill from the Kurgan force, but he had two minor advantages: the steep hills on either side of the valley made it difficult f
or the Kurgan to flank him, and a rocky hill with a small wooden shrine of Sig-mar at its top jutted up out of a thicket of bare-branched trees just inside the mouth of the stem, further narrowing the front that the Kurgan could attack him on, as well as providing a perfect platform for his mortars and cannon. The hill was virtually a cliff at its northern end, but sloped away gently to the south, and Manfred’s army was split, one half on either side of it.

  Unsurprisingly, Manfred’s army had been giving ground. The Chaos force were forcing them into the stem like a hand-gunner packing wadding into the barrel of his gun. They had not yet pushed Manfred so far south that he had lost the advantage of the rocky hill, though this looked likely on the east side of the hill, where Manfred’s forces were stretched thinner and the Kurgan forces were heaviest. If this happened it would be disaster for Manfred, for the Kurgan would then be able to sweep around the little hill from the south and attack the forces on the west side of the hill from the rear.

  Hals sucked air through his teeth. “Looks grim.”

  “Aye,” said Reiner. “But imagine how much worse it would be if we hadn’t tipped the northers’ cannon into the river. If they were firing that monster from the castle ramparts it might be over by now.”

  “Where’s Albrecht?” asked Franka.

  “There,” said Oskar.

  Reiner and the others looked where he was pointing. Through the haze of smoke that wafted over the battlefield, Reiner could just see a troop of knights riding out of patchy woods on a hillside on the far side of the valley. Albrecht was at their head, a vexillary holding aloft his family banner beside him. Several companies of swordsmen and handgunners followed the knights, and four cannon crews began to wheel their pieces into position. Somehow the baron had found a path through the hills and had come out north of the battle line. A charge down the steep hillside and he could take the Chaos force in the rear.