by Nathan Long
He looked at Franka. Her soft brown eyes had somehow grown sharp as daggers. They lanced his soul. ‘We…’
There was a clatter of boots in the passage behind them. The Blackhearts turned as the front door flew open and six engineers burst in, faces flushed.
‘They’re coming!’ cried the first, slamming the door behind him. ‘Hurry! Let’s be…’ He stopped short as he saw who he faced.
Reiner glanced back to the dining room. Gutzmann and Shaeder’s greatswords were looking into the foyer as well. For a long moment the tableau held, as each side sorted out who was who and what was what.
It was Gutzmann who broke it, by leaping up and running across the table, sending plates and goblets flying, then charging through the parlour to skid to a stop at Reiner’s side.
‘Kill them!’ called one of the Hammers. ‘They mustn’t expose the plan!’
Gutzmann grinned, though it was obvious he was in pain from a dozen wounds. ‘So, Hetzau. Right in all particulars. I owe you an apology.’
Reiner was embarrassed by the general’s trust, for he had been thinking that he could stab him in the neck and fulfil Manfred’s orders then and there. But the engineers were drawing swords and hammers and axes and advancing on them on one side, and Shaeder’s greatswords were coming through the parlour on the other. Reiner needed Gutzmann’s sword more than he needed him dead. And more than that, he didn’t want him dead. He felt a kinship with him. They were both bright men. They shared a wry humour. And they had both been manipulated and betrayed by Altdorf. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to kill him after all. Gert’s foolish notion that if the Empire was threatened here, Gutzmann would reconsider deserting, suddenly became very attractive.
‘Back the way we came, lads,’ said Reiner. ‘Jergen, Karel. Help me hold the swordsmen. The rest, break through these ditch diggers.’
The men shifted around so that Reiner, Karel and Jergen faced the Hammer Bearers while the others jabbed at the engineers with spears, swords and axes.
Gutzmann stood shoulder to shoulder with Reiner as the Hammers closed with them. There were six of the black-clad giants. Reiner’s wrist nearly snapped as he parried a cut from one. Gutzmann blocked another and riposted with ease. Wounded as he was, he looked like he could fight all night.
‘I never thought I’d be glad to see anyone break out of my brig,’ he said.
‘Four of this lot came to kill us,’ said Reiner. ‘We turned the tables on them.’ He ducked a slashing blade and pinked his opponent in the leg. ‘We thought they’d done for you.’
Gutzmann grinned. ‘They meant to. But when they took me down into the mine I started to suspect, and ran away. We’ve been playing hide and seek in the tunnels since.’
The engineers were falling back. Though armed and schooled as soldiers, they were not used to hand to hand combat. Hals stabbed one in the arm and he dropped his mallet. Gert brained him with his axe. Franka ducked a hammer, and was about to run her man through when Pavel pulled her back.
‘Behind me, lass,’ he said.
‘What!’ Franka shoved him. ‘Don’t be an ass!’ She tried to squirm back around him, but he and Hals closed ranks.
Gutzmann blinked. ‘Lass?’
‘I’ll explain later,’ said Reiner.
The Blackhearts forced the engineers back while Gutzmann, Jergen, Karel and Reiner protected their rear. They could do little more than block and retire, for even Jergen was reduced to playing a defensive game against so many skilled blades. At last the engineers broke and fled out of the door. Pavel, Gert, Franka and Giano ran after them.
Hals stopped at the door. ‘Clear, captain. Disengage.’
‘Fall back!’ shouted Reiner.
Jergen, Karel and Gutzmann jumped back from the Hammers with Reiner, and ran for the door. The greatswords lunged forward, stabbing at them as they darted through. Hals slammed the door in the Hammers’ faces.
As they ran down the short hall Reiner frowned, for at the end, the rest of the Blackhearts and the last few engineers stood together, not fighting, but instead staring into the entry chamber.
‘Go! Go!’ called Reiner. He pushed through them, dragging at Franka, then froze as he saw why they had stopped.
‘Sigmar’s balls,’ said Gutzmann, beside him.
The greatswords came roaring down the passage, swinging at the Blackhearts’ backs.
Gutzmann spun on them, hissing. ‘Quiet, you fools, or we’re all dead!’
And such was his aura of command that they skidded to a stop before him.
Gutzmann pointed. ‘Look.’
They looked.
It seemed, in the dark, a muddy river, flowing through the mine—a river at full flood that carried branches and trees and wagons with it. It was ratmen—so many, so densely packed, and so fleet of foot that it was difficult to see them as separate bodies. They poured out of the third tunnel in an unending tide, spears and halberds bobbing above their heads, and disappeared out of the mine entrance without break or pause. They didn’t march as men. They kept to no formations. There were no ranks and files, no order, just a pulsing, fevered rush. The carts, overloaded with odd brass contraptions and strange weapons, careened through it all, pulled by scrawny, filthy rat-slaves that were harnessed to them like oxen. More frightening than the weapons were hulking, half-seen shapes, taller and more massive than men, that lurched along, roaring, as ratmen in grey robes guided them with whips and sticks.
Reiner could feel the vibration of the army’s passage through his feet, like an avalanche that never stopped. And the smell was overwhelming. They seemed to push it out of the tunnel before them. It filled the entry chamber like a solid thing—a reeking, animal stink mixed with the stench of illness and death. Reiner covered his mouth. The others did the same.
Fortunately, the ratmen seemed so intent on their purpose that they looked neither left nor right, and so hadn’t yet seen the men at the side of the chamber, but there were outrunners—sergeants perhaps—who loped along beside the river of rat-flesh, and it was inevitable that one of them would eventually look their way.
‘Back into the house,’ whispered Gutzmann. ‘Quietly.’
The men backed away, Blackhearts and engineers and greatswords together, too awed by the horror before them to remember to fight each other.
As they tiptoed back into the stone house, Gutzmann turned on the Hammer Bearers, who looked sick with shock. ‘You disgust me! To deliver your fellows into the hands of such monsters! How can you stand to live?’
‘You have it wrong, general,’ said their sergeant. ‘Commander Shaeder has a plan.’
‘A plan?’ Gutzmann sputtered. ‘What kind of plan allows these vermin to take the fort unawares?’ He pointed his sword at the sergeant, then hissed and pressed his elbow to his side. ‘You, Krieder. You will… You will escort me. We will take the hill track back to the fort as quickly as we may.’ Below his breastplate his jerkin was red and damp. He was more wounded than he had let on.
‘We cannot allow that, general,’ said Krieder.
The greatswords raised their swords.
Gutzmann, Reiner and the Blackhearts went on guard as the Hammer Bearers began to close with them again. The engineers hefted their weapons again as well, but seemed reluctant to return to the melee.
A greatsword lunged at Reiner, slashing at his head. Reiner parried and dodged away, but before he could counter, a bang and a muffled shriek from the parlour made everyone jump. Reiner looked beyond the Hammers, who had stepped back again. The parlour fireplace was moving, the mantle splitting in the middle and opening out with a grinding of stone on stone, revealing a secret door.
Out of the black opening staggered an engineer, his face bloody and his clothes shredded. He dragged another, whose arm was over his shoulder, but the man was obviously beyond help. Half his skull had been blown away and his brains were spilling down his neck.
The living engineer threw out a hand to the Hammer Bearers, his eyes wild. ‘Save us. We a
re lost. They knew!’ He tripped over his friend’s slack legs and fell.
Krieder ran to him and pulled him up. ‘What do you say, man?’ He shook him. ‘Speak, damn you!’
The Hammer Bearers joined him. Gutzmann, Reiner and the rest followed them into the parlour.
The engineer’s lower lip trembled. ‘They knew! They swarmed the cart before we could loose it! The tunnel remains open!’
‘Bones of Sigmar,’ breathed the greatsword sergeant. ‘This is…’
Before he could finish, a crowd of ratmen swarmed out of the secret door, looking around with darting black eyes. They stopped when they saw the men and snarled, brandishing curved swords and halberds.
‘So Shaeder had a plan, did he?’ said Gutzmann as the men edged back from the rats.
Sergeant Krieder dropped the dying engineer and joined his fellows. ‘It wasn’t to be like this.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’
The ratmen charged, flowing around the Hammers, the Blackhearts and the engineers in a brown flood. The men slashed at them in a terrified frenzy. One of the greatswords went down immediately, a halberd in his neck. The others closed ranks. An engineer fell, screaming, pierced by two blades. Gutzmann killed a ratman, then grunted and stumbled into Reiner, his leg bleeding. Before Reiner could help him he stood again, and renewed his attack on the squirming wave of fur that surrounded them. These were not the tall black-furred killers Reiner and the others had faced before. They were of the smaller brown variety, but there were more of them.
‘Protect the general!’ cried Krieder, the Hammer sergeant.
His men pressed forward to form a wall around Gutzmann. They hacked down the front line of ratmen like so much underbrush.
‘Bit of an… an about face hey, Krieder?’ said Gutzmann. He was having trouble breathing.
‘My lord,’ said the Hammer sergeant, without looking around, ‘we have doomed the fort through our intrigues. If we must die so that you can save it, so be it.’ He decapitated a ratman. Its head spun across the room. Two more took its place.
Though the Hammer Bearers were in the thick of it, there were plenty of ratmen to go around, a seething jumble of slashing, screeching monsters. Reiner fought three, and all around him he could see the Blackhearts and the engineers kicking and hacking and stabbing. An engineer threw down his hatchet and tried to run away. The ratmen chopped him to pieces.
Franka’s voice raised above the fray. ‘Let me fight, curse you!’
Reiner looked around. Franka was shoving Hals and trying to dodge around him. The butt of a ratman’s spear caught her in the temple. She fell.
‘Franka!’ Reiner cried. He fought to her and stood over her, blocking a spear that stabbed down at her.
‘Sorry, captain,’ said Hals. ‘She won’t stay back.’
‘And will you let her die to keep her from fighting?’
Franka staggered to her feet as Reiner held off the rats. ‘I’m all right, captain,’ she said. But her hands shook as she lifted her sword.
Reiner stepped back as he parried a halberd. His calf touched an obstacle. He looked back. A stone bench.
‘Draw your bow, lass,’ he said. ‘Get up. Gert, Dag, Giano. You too.’ The four eased back and stepped onto the bench as Reiner, Gutzmann, Karel and the Hammer Bearers protected them, then wound their crossbows and nocked arrows. Pavel, Hals and Jergen took up positions behind the bench and guarded their backs. There were no engineers left standing. The bowmen fired over their protector’s heads into the crowd of ratmen and loaded again.
Another Hammer Bearer went down. Only three remained, but each fallen greatsword had accounted for a handful of ratmen. The vermin lay in mounds around the survivors, but more rats stood on their dead to fight them.
Gutzmann stumbled into Reiner again, and narrowly missed being spitted by a ratman’s spear. Reiner pulled him out of the way.
‘My thanks,’ Gutzmann said, gasping. ‘Just need to catch my breath.’
‘Yes, general.’ But Reiner was afraid it was more than that. Gutzmann was pale and shaking.
The tide was turning. The fire of bow and crossbow was thinning the back ranks of the remaining ratmen as the Blackhearts and the Hammers cut down their front lines. But just as Reiner thought the worst might be over, Gutzmann collapsed entirely, and this time sprawled across the floor before the ratmen, utterly exposed. A rat halberdier raised his heavy weapon to stab down at him.
‘No!’ Krieder leapt forward and gutted the ratman, but two more ratmen gored him with swords. The Hammer sergeant vomited blood and fell across Gutzmann’s body.
With a roar of anger, the last two greatswords charged into the thick of the ratmen, swinging their swords with an utter disregard for defence. One took a sword in the groin, but their opponents fell back in pieces, arms, legs and heads severed. It was too much. The ratmen broke in terror, filling the room with a horrible sweaty musk as they tried to flee back to the secret passage. They didn’t make it. Franka, Gert, Giano and Dag shot them down, while Jergen, Karel, Pavel and Hals caught the ones they missed.
As the last rat fell, everyone stopped where they were, sucking air and staring around at the heaps of brown-furred bodies. Reiner felt numb, as if he had been battered by a hurricane. He wasn’t yet recovered from the surprise of the ratmen’s initial attack and already it was over.
‘Sigmar,’ said Hals, snatching up an unbroken wine bottle from the floor. ‘What a dust-up!’ He took a drink and held the bottle out to Reiner. ‘Captain.’
Reiner reached for the bottle, then stopped. He’d almost forgotten his vow to Ranald. He let his hand drop. ‘No. No thank ye.’
Hals shrugged and passed the bottle to Pavel.
As his head stopped swimming, Reiner felt again the steady throbbing vibration of the ratmen on the march. He cursed and looked for a living engineer. There were none. Only one Hammer Bearer still lived. He was rolling Krieder’s body off Gutzmann. Gutzmann was wheezing wetly. The greatsword’s eyes glistened with tears.
Reiner squatted beside them. ‘Pardon, general,’ he said, nodding to Gutzmann, then put a hand on the Hammer’s shoulder. ‘What was that about closing the tunnel? What was your plan?’
The Hammer Bearer looked up at him blankly.
Reiner shook him. ‘Quickly, damn you!
‘The—’ the man swallowed. ‘The engineers filled a mine cart with explosives and hid it in the secret passage where it slopes down to the ratmen’s tunnel. All they had to do was light the fuse and cut the rope, and it would roll down into the tunnel and explode, bringing down the roof and trapping the ratmen inside. But they…’
‘Yes. They knew. This passage?’ Reiner pointed to the open fire place.
The greatsword nodded. ‘At the bottom.’
Reiner looked at Gutzmann. He was very pale. ‘General, can you travel?’
‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’ He said it through gritted teeth.
Reiner stood and looked around. The Blackhearts were looking a bit worse for wear. Franka had a cut on her leg, as did Hals. Dag had a bump the size of a goose egg over his temple and was weaving slightly. Jergen was wrapping his hand in strips torn from the tablecloth, and Pavel had apparently lost most of his left ear. He was wrapping his head with a strip cut from the dining room tablecloth.
Reiner sighed. ‘Bind up your wounds, lads. We’re not done yet. Karel. Stay here with the general. Make him ready to move.’ He glared at the Hammer Bearer. ‘You’ll show us the way to the cart.’
SIXTEEN
Shallya Receive You
REINER AND THE Blackhearts raced with the Hammer Bearer down the winding, always descending passage, torches in hand. Every second counted, for the longer they left the tunnel open the more ratmen would attack the unsuspecting fort. As they ran, the Hammer Bearer told Reiner what Shaeder had intended.
‘The commander never meant to betray the Empire. He only wanted to discredit Gutzmann and prove himself to Altdorf by winning a great victory over a ter
rible enemy.’
‘So he did all this out of jealousy?’ asked Reiner, incredulous.
‘Not jealousy,’ said the greatsword stiffly. ‘Duty. Gutzmann meant to desert. Shaeder had to stop him, but unless the general was made to look a traitor to his troops, they would have revolted, and the border would have been undefended. Shaeder didn’t know how to proceed until the engineers discovered the rats.’
Reiner frowned. ‘So he set up that charade with the dead ratmen and the dinner table to make it look like Gutzmann was conspiring with them?’
‘Aye,’ said the Hammer.
Reiner nodded. ‘And he planned to bring down the tunnel after only half the rat army had come out, so the men would see the threat, and yet would have an easy victory?’
The greatsword nodded. ‘Aye. You have it. Brilliant, was it not?’
‘Except it didn’t work,’ growled Hals.
‘The ratmen betrayed us,’ said the Hammer Bearer, angry.
Reiner rolled his eyes. ‘You shock me!’
The Hammer held up his hand and they slowed to a stop. ‘Around the next bend,’ he said, catching his breath.
Reiner nodded. ‘Right. Giano?’
Giano handed his torch to Gert and crept forward into the darkness. After a short wait, he returned, eyes bright and eager.
‘They making to be moving it. Six, seven soldier-rat, and ten maybe slave-rat,’ he said. ‘They putting rope on back to let down slow.’ He grinned. ‘We take ‘em easy, hey?’
‘Have they started?’
Giano shook his head.
‘Good,’ said Reiner. ‘And the cart. It’s still full of powder kegs?’
‘Aye.’
Reiner grunted, satisfied. ‘Right. Then we leave our torches here, and go in swift and silent. Gert, Giano, Dag and Franka, bolts and arrows on the string. The rest, stay low. The moment they see us coming, you four let fly, and we run in swinging. We want to take ‘em all in the first charge, aye?’