[Blackhearts 01] - Valnir's Bane

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  “And there,” said Oskar again, pointing south.

  Reiner looked left. Out of Manfred’s camp came company after company of spearmen, all marching in the disturbing loose-limbed gait Reiner’s companions had seen before. They formed a broad front two hundred paces behind Manfred’s lines.

  “Does he support Manfred after all?” asked Pavel, confused. “Have we been wrong all along?”

  A great cheer went up as Manfred’s beleaguered army noticed Albrecht’s forces, and they began to fight with renewed vigour. The Kurgan saw the fresh troops as well, and began frantically trying to manoeuvre men into position to meet Albrecht’s knights. But the elation of the men and the terror of the Kurgan were both short-lived, for strangely, though they were in excellent positions to attack and support, Albrecht’s troops, both on the hill and behind Manfred’s lines, remained where they were, silent watchers to the bloody battle before them.

  “What is he waiting for?” asked Hals angrily. “He could have ’em on the run.”

  “Where is the banner?” asked Reiner.

  They looked for it, but couldn’t see it.

  Meanwhile, the few feet of ground Manfred’s troops had won back when the Chaos force had become confused by the new threat were rapidly being lost again as the northers fought desperately to beat the foe they faced before the new foe attacked.

  Beside Reiner, Franka choked. “There it is! On the little hill.”

  Reiner and the others followed her gaze. Riding up the rocky hill in the centre of Manfred’s line was Erich, mounted on his white charger and holding the vile banner in his lance socket.

  Reiner could see Manfred’s gun crews advancing toward the young knight, weapons drawn, but they didn’t attack. Instead, the men fell to their knees before the banner and let him pass.

  Erich reached the crest of the hill and raised the banner high over his head. It flapped thickly in the wind. Though there was no change in the weather, a pall seemed to fall across the whole valley, as if the banner sucked up light. Reiner felt a chill shiver through him. Franka moaned. The effect on the troops in the valley was even stronger. Manfred’s men faltered and fell back all along his line, stunned into inaction by the banner’s dread influence.

  The Chaos troops hesitated as well, confused by this strange symbol, but they seemed not to fear it as the men of the Empire did, and took advantage of their foes’ numb horror to press their attack. Manfred’s army defended itself, but it was clear that their morale was at low ebb, and they fought as if distracted.

  “We’ve got to reach that banner before it’s too late,” said Franka.

  “Is already too late,” said Giano. “I want to help, but they dead men. We go, hey?”

  Reiner shook his head. It was strange. He could hear the screams of the dying and the bellowing of captains and sergeants trying desperately to rally dispirited troops. He knew the situation was hopeless. He knew riding into that mess was suicide. If he did what was in his best interest, he would be slinking over the hill with his tail between his legs, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let that stiff-necked clot Erich win the day. He couldn’t let Lady Magda and that overstuffed sausage Albrecht have their way either. “No. We stay. Come on. Straight for the hill.”

  He started down the steep hill with his companions limping and grunting behind him. They reached the valley floor just south of Manfred’s line, where field surgeons and camp followers were dragging the dead and the wounded away from the fighting, and broken men moaned on the ground. A hundred paces to their left, standing in eerie silence, was Albrecht’s infantry: rank after rank of spearmen and archers gazing blankly forward like flesh statues. Reiner’s companions began picking their way across the body-littered field. Dressed as they were in Empire colours, none of Manfred’s troops paid them any mind.

  Halfway across, a movement out of the corner of his eye made Reiner look up. On top of the rocky hill, Erich was standing in his stirrups and waving the evil banner in a circle over his head.

  “Sigmar’s hammer!” grunted Hals. “Here they come.”

  Reiner looked to his left. Albrecht’s infantry were advancing in perfect unison, spears lowered, eyes dead. Behind them, the archers aimed at the sky and loosed their arrows.

  “Run!” Reiner cried. “Run for the hill!”

  The company ran as fast as they could, hobbling and stumbling and cursing as a cloud of arrows arched overhead, momentarily blocking out the sun, then fell to earth like black rain. Fortunately, the archers’ target was Manfred’s line, and only a few that fell short landed near them. It wasn’t so fortunate for Manfred’s men, who screamed in surprise and terror as the arrows cut them down.

  “The traitor!” cried Franka.

  Over the shoulder of the rocky hill, Reiner could see that Albrecht and his knights had answered Erich’s signal as well. They were charging down into the valley lances levelled. From Reiner’s vantage, it was impossible to see who they were attacking, but the barbaric howl of rage that echoed across the valley gave the answer. Albrecht had lowered the boom on the Kurgan at last.

  “He attacks both sides!” barked Hals as he limped on. “What is the mad fool about.”

  “Mad?” gasped Reiner. “He has more genius than I credited him with. He wants the castle for himself, so he waits until each side has weakened the other, then attacks both.”

  They reached the thin woods that surrounded the rocky hill just as Albrecht’s spears overran their latitude. Manfred’s battle line, already much depleted, had divided into two back-to-back fronts, one line continuing to face the Kurgan, the other turning to face their ensorcelled brothers, who at the last twenty paces broke into a charge.

  It was a disturbing sight, for Albrecht’s troops showed no emotion as they rushed forward. They raised no battle cry, snarled no challenge, only stared dead ahead as they drove their spears into Manfred’s ragged line in perfect unison. And yet for all their lack of emotion, they were savagely bloodthirsty, slashing and hacking like butchers, biting and clawing and gouging eyes as they came to grips with their foes, and all the while gazing blankly into the middle distance.

  Adding to the slaughter was the fact that Manfred’s troops were hesitant to attack the spearmen. Cries of “Erhardt, what ails you? Do you not know me?” and “Beren, brother, I beg you, stop!” rose over the melee, only to end in gurgling screams. Reiner heard a sob beside him and saw that Hals was weeping. The only factor even slightly in Manfred’s troops’ favour was that Albrecht’s spears, though unimaginably fierce and brutal, were also clumsy and awkward—puppets manipulated by a poor master.

  “Up the hill,” said Reiner, turning Hals away from the battle and pushing him into the bare woods. “Hurry.”

  But before they got far, they saw that the base of the slope was guarded by a unit of swordsmen, all with the glazed look of the slaves of the banner.

  “This way,” said Reiner, and quietly led the others north along the side of the rising hill until the swordsmen were out of sight behind them. The hill angled up like a board pried out of a plank floor and the sides were steep. Reiner pushed through brambles and brush until he reached it.

  “Oskar, take my arm.”

  He helped the artilleryman mount the slanting strata while Pavel did the same for Hals. Franka and Giano spidered up around them. They pulled themselves over the edge a third of the way up the slope and crouched in a clump of bushes, looking down to see if the swords had noticed them. The men continued to stare blankly into the woods. Further up the hill Manfred’s gun crews were back at work at their cannons, and it was with a sick lurch of the heart that Reiner realised that they were firing on their own troops. The banner had turned them against their own. Beyond the gun crews, at the crest of the hill, Erich stood, facing out over the battle field, banner held high. His back was protected by six more swordsmen. Lady Magda stood beside him, watching the battle intensely.

  A grunt came from the nearest cannon. One of the crew was shambling toward them,
eyes dull, his ram-rod raised like a weapon. Reiner looked down the hill. The swords hadn’t yet noticed him.

  “Shoot him,” he whispered.

  Franka hesitated. “He isn’t our enemy. He is one of Manfred’s men.”

  The man’s grunts were getting louder as he tried to warn his fellows. He waved the ram-rod around his head.

  “No longer. Shoot him.”

  “But his mind is not his own.”

  A dull thwack sounded beside them and the crewman dropped with a crossbow bolt in his chest.

  Giano shrugged and reloaded. “Any man try to kill me is enemy.”

  But he had silenced the man too late. The swordsmen had heard him, and were lumbering up the hill, while more cannoneers were turning their way.

  “That’s torn it,” said Reiner. “We’ll be surrounded in a minute.”

  “Just a moment,” said Oskar suddenly. “I have an idea.” He hurried toward the approaching cannon crew.

  “Oskar!” Reiner groaned, then started after him. “Come on you lot,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s now or never.”

  “Since when does that one have ideas?” growled Hals, as he and the others followed.

  Oskar dodged around the gunners’ clumsy swings and ran for their gun. Pavel clubbed one of the gunners aside with the haft of his spear and Reiner kicked the other to the ground, reluctant despite his orders to Franka to kill the befuddled soldiers.

  At the cannon, Oskar uncorked a keg of black powder, stuffed a length of lit match-cord in the hole, and kicked it down the hill. It rolled and bounced down the slope toward the advancing swords, fuse fizzing, as he primed a second keg.

  Reiner grinned. It was a good idea. He hadn’t thought the gunner had it in him.

  As Oskar started the second keg rolling, the first hit one of the advancing swordsmen in the chest, knocking him flat. The others turned somnambulantly to look at him—and paid the price. The keg exploded amidst them, blowing them all to red ruin.

  Oskar gaped. “They… they didn’t run.”

  Reiner grimaced. “You haven’t been paying attention.”

  The second keg bounded past the troops’ maimed bodies and exploded in the woods at the base of the hill. A dozen trees caught fire, and the flames began to spread.

  “That’ll keep reinforcements at bay,” said Pavel.

  “They won’t need reinforcements,” said Hals. “This lot’ll do for us.”

  Reiner looked behind him. All the men on the hill had turned at the explosion. The gun crews were leaving their cannon and advancing on them, and Lady Magda, Erich, and his swords were staring at them.

  “Scum!” cried Erich, stepping toward them. “Do you still plague me?”

  “No,” said Lady Magda, holding him back. “The banner must stay here.”

  “As you wish, lady,” said Erich, shrugging off her hand. “There is no need to move. Back to your cannon!” he called to the gun crews. “I’ll handle this rabble.”

  The artillerymen obeyed like sheep.

  “Shoot him!” shouted Reiner, drawing his pistols, as Erich started to turn the banner. “Kill him!”

  Franka and Giano raised their bows as Oskar aimed his handgun by laying the long barrel across the splint of his broken wrist.

  “Hold your fire!” Erich commanded, and to Reiner’s chagrin, he found it impossible to disobey the order. He could not force his fingers to squeeze the triggers. The others were similarly affected, shaking with the effort to shoot.

  Hands shaking, Giano finally fired his crossbow, but the bolt flew off at an angle. “Curse it!” said the Tilean, frustrated. “My hands no listen!”

  “It’s the banner,” said Franka, her arms trembling as she held her bow at full draw.

  Erich laughed and raised the banner, pointing at them with his free hand as his six swordsmen advanced. “Kneel, soldiers! Listen to your leader. I am your rightful captain, You must follow my orders. Kneel and bow your heads.”

  To Reiner’s left and right Pavel, Hals and Oskar fell to their knees. Their chins dropped to their chests, though he could see them struggling to raise them. Reiner felt an almost unconquerable urge to follow suit. Erich was their rightful leader. He was the most senior officer now that Veirt was dead, and he was so strong and brave and had so much more experience than Reiner. It would be such a relief to let the mantle of command slip from his shoulders and let someone else lead again. Reiner’s knees bent, but as he looked up to his beloved leader, he paused halfway to the ground.

  Erich’s face was twisted in a smug sneer, a jarring discontinuity with the noble image of him Reiner held in his head. He froze as his mind fought to reconcile the two pictures. To his left he saw that Giano and Franka were similarly halted in mid-genuflection.

  Erich’s swordsmen were closing, moving not like soldiers of the Empire, but like apes, hunched and menacing, eyes blank, mouths slack. Reiner tried to move, but his limbs couldn’t answer the conflicting commands his mind was sending them.

  The first swordsman reached Franka and raised his sword like an executioner. Franka shook with the effort to leap away, but could not. The sword was coming down.

  “No!” barked Reiner, and fired his first pistol without thinking, blasting a ball up through the swordsman’s jaw and out of the top of his head. The man dropped, gouting blood and spilling brains, and Reiner found that this small disobedience had broken the banner’s hold on him. He could move.

  The pistol’s report had freed Franka and Giano as well. They stumbled back from the attacking swordsmen, gasping and cursing, but Oskar, Pavel and Hals were still frozen, sagging bonelessly to the ground. The swordsmen closed to cut them down.

  Franka, Reiner and Giano jumped forward again to defend their comrades. Franka lunged under a swinging blade with her dagger, but was clubbed to the ground by the swordsman’s elbow. Reiner blocked a sword that swung for Oskar’s head, then shot its owner through the heart with his second pistol. Giano threw his crossbow in a swordsman’s face and stabbed him through the heart with his sword.

  “Kneel, curse you!” Erich bellowed, but they were too busy to listen.

  “Hals! Pavel! Oskar!” cried Reiner as he parried two blades. “Wake up!”

  Franka stumbled up, dazed. A swordsman pulled back his sword to hack at her. She dodged unsteadily to the side and he missed. Reiner chopped through the man’s shoulder to the bone. He looked up dully and stabbed at Reiner as if he hadn’t felt the blow at all.

  Surprised, Reiner forgot to parry, and had to drop desperately to the ground to avoid the thrust. The swordsman raised his sword for the killing blow, but suddenly a spear thrust up into his ribs. Reiner glanced to the side. Pavel clung to the spear like a lifeline.

  “Thankee, lad,” said Reiner, rising. He hamstrung the swordsman and turned to face another.

  Pavel was still too muddled to answer. Beside him, Hals was slapping himself in the face and cursing, fighting the banner with all his will. Reiner and Giano guarded them. Oskar crawled away from the melee, dragging his gun.

  Three swordsmen remained. They fought with crude strength, but little finesse. If Reiner and his companions had been in good health and in full possession of their faculties they would have made short work of them, but dazed and wounded as they were, they were nearly as ungainly as their mesmerized opponents. The swordsmen’s attacks smashed into their parries with numbing force, and they shrugged off wounds that would have had normal men screaming.

  Franka helped Reiner kill another sword, cutting his throat with her dagger from behind while Reiner kept him busy.

  “Go on, captain,” called Hals as the swordsman fell. “We’ve these last two. Go teach that brainless jagger a lesson.”

  Reiner looked to where Erich and Lady Magda watched the fight with anxious eyes. He didn’t want to face von Eisenberg one on one, especially when the knight had the power of the banner giving him strength. But someone had to do it. With a sigh he plucked a pistol from the belt of a fallen swordsman a
nd started up the hill as his companions fought on behind him. Smoke and sparks blew all around him as the woods that surrounded the hill burned like brittle hay. It was almost impossible to see the battlefield through the flames.

  Erich thrust the banner at him. “Kneel, dog! As Baron Albrecht’s vexillary, I command you! Do as he ordered! Obey me!”

  Lady Magda smirked as Reiner staggered, the force of the order like a yoke on his neck, bearing down on him. The urge to kneel and kiss the ground was nearly overpowering. But having fought it off once, it was easier to disobey a second time. He kept walking, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it.

  “Sorry, von Eisenberg,” he said, forcing the words through his lips. “You’ve picked the wrong troops to try your sorceries on. Brig scum are terrible at following orders.”

  With a squeak of fear, Lady Magda backed away, then turned and ran to the edge of the cliff. She snatched up a yellow flag from the ground and began to wave it vigorously over her head.

  Reiner paid her no mind. He raised his pistol and aimed at Erich.

  “Put it down, Hetzau,” called Erich. “I command you.”

  Reiner fought the order and kept hold of the gun, but only just. Firing it was out of the question. His fingers would not obey him.

  Erich laughed and slashed at him with his free hand. The knight was unarmed, and ten paces away, and yet Reiner flew back as if punched in the chest with a battering ram. He crashed to the ground, gasping, a fiery pain burning his ribs and abdomen. He looked down at himself. His leather jerkin was untouched, but blood was seeping through his shirt. He tore it open. Three deep gashes had opened the flesh of his abdomen. He could see the white of his ribs through one. He winced in agony.

  “The claws of the manticore,” he croaked.

  The claws of the griffin,” said Erich, smug. To rend the enemies of the Empire.”

  He slashed again. Reiner rolled to the side and claw marks appeared in the turf where he’d lain.

  “If you still think you’re fighting for the Empire, you’re more of a fool than I thought,” grunted Reiner. “And griffin or manticore, it’s still an unfair advantage.”