by David Guymer
‘This baron sounds more of a joy the more I hear,’ said Gotrek.
Felix wrapped his cloak tightly about himself as a peal of thunder rumbled through the thick fog that pressed over the moors. As Felix shivered, Gotrek grimly raised his axe, his one eye staring purposefully into the fog. The diffuse rumble continued without break, growing louder. Felix felt a trembling through the worn soles of his boots.
‘What is it?’ Felix hissed, drawing his sword and stepping around Rudi to tuck in close behind the Slayer’s back.
‘Riders, manling.’
Felix followed Gotrek’s stare. He could see nothing, perhaps a grey outline somewhere in the distance. From behind him came the twinned scrape of Rudi unsheathing sword and dagger. Felix lowered himself to the sharp, sodden ground and mimed Rudi to do likewise. Gotrek held firm, axe ready, its rune aglow in the wet and gloom.
‘Get down, Gotrek,’ Felix hissed. ‘They surely can’t see a thing in this mist. We let them pass, then sneak around behind and make for the Totenwald.’
Rudi agreed with a vigorous nod.
‘No, manling. They’re coming straight for us.’
Felix bit down a curse. ‘Are you certain?’
‘Always, manling.’ Gotrek’s axe cut through the fog. Its runes hummed dimly. ‘Sounds carry. It’s like being underground.’
Grimly, Felix stood and held his sword ready. As he watched, the smudge of grey he had seen shimmered out into three distinct forms, then five, then seven, then ten, each acquiring definition of their own as the thunder of galloping hooves became all encompassing.
‘Shoot on sight, you say?’ Felix asked.
Rudi did not answer. Back turned, Felix could only imagine Gotrek’s mad grin.
‘Best make it quick then, hadn’t we?’
Grey flanked and black-maned, sodden with dew, the horses burst from the fog like ghosts granted form, the grey of their riders’ cloaks snapping at their tails. The horsemen themselves were no more auspicious, garbed in a chimeric blend of darkened mail and leather. Terror exploded in Felix’s chest as they bore down.
They meant to ride right over them!
Gotrek stood his ground and roared down the throat of the cavalry charge, brandishing his enormous axe with a deadly flourish. The lead horse whinnied and reared, Gotrek dodging its flailing hooves and leaping back as it stamped down where he had just been. Its rider screamed curses into his horse’s ear, wrapping his wrist into the rein and kicking back into the stirrups. The same was being repeated as the charge fouled behind it, horses fanning out from the rear, shaking at their bridles, a whickering chorus of unnerved steeds and swearing men.
With urgent whistles and clicked tongues, the horsemen directed their steeds around Felix and the others, an overlapping barrier of snorting horseflesh in case any of them should be fool enough to try and run. Their stormy expressions gave the impression that they would actually prefer it if they did, that their being captive had somehow complicated things that they would rather have been simple. Rudi pressed his back to Felix’s, weapons drawn. Felix could not see his face, but he could feel the sweat where their necks touched. He could feel the riders’ pistols trained on his back. It would only take one itchy finger for this all to become frightfully simple again.
Felix released his sword with care, trying to avoid any swift movements.
The lead cavalryman, still battling his own stubborn mount, coolly unholstered a stub-nosed pistol and levelled it at Gotrek. It was some kind of hand-blunderbuss. It swayed level as the horse beneath it fought. The horseman regarded the three of them fiercely. Long black hair strayed from the confines of a peaked leather cavalry helm. A thick, horseshoe moustache sagged with accumulated sweat. He twisted in his saddle, gun unwavering.
‘Luthor!’
‘Captain.’ The return came almost at once. A younger rider in similar garb spurred his horse around.
‘Make for the township. Tell Father Gramm we’ve apprehended,’ he paused, double checked, the mist making precision difficult, ‘two men and a dwarf. Exactly where he divined the boundary line breached.’ Felix saw the man sneer. ‘Offer my compliments.’
Luthor snapped a salute as his horse turned, digging his heels into its flanks and spurring it into a canter that bore both into the mist. The clatter of its hooves persisted, but even that shortly vanished, form and substance both swallowed whole.
The captain returned his attention to Felix, his pistol not straying from the snarling Trollslayer. He looked down from his mount, his sneer, if anything, setting even deeper. ‘I offer one chance to make this easy for yourselves. Tell me what I want to hear and we may let you turn around with no more than a flogging.’
‘Try me, horseling,’ growled Gotrek. ‘We’ll see who spends longest peeling blood from their fingers thereafter.’
Laughter burst from the barrel chest of one of the circling horsemen. His thick black beard was crossed with scars and his eyes, set deep into his face, were hard to see from Felix’s lowly vantage. ‘Whoa there, captain! I think he means it!’
Gotrek shot the man a contemptuous glare.
‘I’ll ask one time only,’ the captain bellowed, evidently a man not accustomed to having his authority challenged. ‘Where is the baron?’
Gotrek met the man’s hot stare. ‘I recall that Osterwald had a great many whorehouses. Did you start there?’
The horseman’s sneer twisted into a furious snarl. ‘Why you insolent–’
‘Wait,’ said Felix, setting a hand on Gotrek’s shoulder. The dwarf growled, but consented to lowering his axe a fraction. The horseman similarly allowed his pistol to drop the thinnest inch. ‘You asked after the baron. Are you saying that von Kuber is missing?’
The rider bared his teeth, a bestial show of rage. ‘Ambushed by the Beast of the Moors as he escorted a congregation of Sigmarite brothers to their minster in Osterwald. We found their bloodless bodies and the remnants of their wagon not far from here. The bodies were not a half-day old.’ Leather creaked as he leant forward in the saddle. ‘You see why I question what brings you here.’
Felix took a step back, but Rudi blocked his attempted retreat. The hate in the man’s eyes was fierce to the point of inhuman. ‘I assure you. We had nothing to do with that attack.’
‘So you would claim,’ the man sneered. ‘Yet here you are on the moors, with winter coming, in lands known forbidden.’ He grasped a silver hammer, worn over his armour on a chain about his neck. ‘You wear no article of faith.’
‘We don’t, but–’
‘More likely you are agents of the Beast!’ The man was practically spitting. Felix watched his frighteningly controlled pistol with a tense grimace.
‘Have you seen the Beast?’ said Felix, trying to sound calm, hoping that it might spread. ‘Or those creatures it commands? It’s not something served by mortal men.’
‘I don’t expect you to admit your guilt to me here, but we have… ways… of making sinners recant.’
‘And just who are you then?’ said Gotrek, his axe continuing to menace.
The man threw down an ugly look, pulling himself higher in his saddle. ‘I am Konrad Seitz, captain of the militia, proctor of Baron Götz von Kuber’s holy protectorate of Sigmarshafen. I am the one who will be asking questions.’ He aimed his pistol meaningfully at Gotrek’s nose. Felix suspected that if Konrad decided to fire, then this gun would fire. ‘I am a faithful man, but not a patient one. One final time. Where is Baron von Kuber?’
‘Let’s just finish them here.’ A voice barked from the eerie shadows behind Felix’s back. ‘We could say they resisted, that we had no choice. I want blood for the baron.’ There was an angry jeer at that. ‘Gramm need never know.’
The black-bearded thug had his pistol trained on Felix’s back. Emotion made it shake. ‘Blood for blood, captain. It’s your word that counts now Götz is gone. Not Gramm’s.’
Konrad glared down at Gotrek, considering his bondsman’s words.
‘It couldn’t have been
us,’ shouted Rudi. ‘And it couldn’t have been the Beast. The Beast attacked us. We all saw it.’ He looked to Felix and Gotrek for support. ‘It destroyed my entire village. My own father and brother!’
Konrad withdrew his pistol, used its muzzle to brush his moustache from his lips. He smiled and, with a sharp cry that had Felix jumping aside, urged his horse forward. Gotrek swore ripely in the dwarfen tongue as its bulk shoved him back but, to Felix’s relief, stayed his axe.
‘Well, well, well, Rudolph Hartmann. If you aren’t the dumbest little deserter then I pity the poor mother of the man who is.’
‘Deserter?’ said Gotrek, turning on their companion with an unpleasant look.
‘It’s Rudolph Hartmann!’ Konrad turned his horse a full circle, bellowing the name to each face within the encircling ring. ‘Rudolph Hartmann!’ Konrad laughed once without humour, his expression reverting almost at once to its settled sneer. ‘We thought you dead in the Totenwald, Rudi. But then why would the Beast kill those with whom it is in league?’
‘Lies!’ Rudi screamed, lunging for Konrad with his sword, only for the cavalryman’s horse to trot nimbly back. Konrad barked with laughter, directing his dragoon pistol toward Rudi’s face. The young soldier bared his teeth, the thought of going down in a blaze of furious glory evidently crossing his mind.
‘Put it down, Rudi,’ said Felix, softly.
‘But–’
‘Put it down.’
The muzzle of Konrad’s pistol nodded groundward. Rudi scowled and let his fingers go limp and his sword drop. Then his knife too. Both hit the thorny ground with a dull thud.
‘Still the coward, Hartmann,’ observed Konrad with a cruel smile and a wink that had his men chuckling
‘This is a serious mistake, friend,’ said Felix. ‘I don’t know how the Beast could be in two places at once, but know that we’re not your enemy. We too hunt the Beast.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Konrad with a sneer. ‘Torsten, Wolfgang, Klaus, your horses. Mount these three and bind them. The dwarf first. We’ll send riders for you with remounts the moment we return.’
The three men so named swung from their saddles. The thuggish black beard, Torsten, pulled a second pistol from a holster strapped to his horse’s harness and covered the other two as they converged on Gotrek. The dwarf stood firm and readied his axe. His eye carried a mad glint. The men held off, each daring the other to go first.
‘It’ll be my cold corpse you strap to that animal, manling. Who’ll be first to come and try it?’
Felix quickly looked around, trying to gauge their odds of fighting their way out.
It did not take a second look to tell him that their chances were not good.
Even if Gotrek could overpower the three soldiers that faced him – and that, at least, Felix rated quite likely – there remained six mounted men with pistols primed and drawn and he had no intention of dying over a case of mistaken identity.
‘Please, Gotrek. Perhaps it would be best to go with them. There must be someone reasonable in von Kuber’s company. Maybe even someone who can help us. It’ll be easier to claim our innocence and be back about our business if we’re not dead.’
One of the men edged forward only for a swift feint from Gotrek’s axe to send him dodging back.
‘Listen to your friend, dwarf,’ spoke Konrad. ‘This ends one of two ways, seated on a saddle or your body lashed dead to its hindquarters.’
Gotrek spat on the ground and snarled. ‘Horses are for elves.’
‘They are headed our way,’ Felix offered.
Gotrek eyed the nearest mount warily, as though it might suddenly sprout bat wings and snort fire from its nostrils. One of Konrad’s men came running with a length of twine. Gotrek warned him back with a look.
‘I’ll come, manling. But don’t push your luck.’
Gotrek grumbled as a grey-cloaked soldier bound his axe-hand in twine. The man tied it off nervously, occasional glances to Gotrek’s other ham-like fist. The soldier named Klaus, who had been fool enough to come at Gotrek before he was ready, moaned in a heap on the ground trying to staunch the flow from his broken nose.
‘I said I’d come,’ Gotrek grumbled, glaring at Felix as if he was the one that had dragged them both across the moors.
Konrad guided his mount alongside, minding the dwarf with his pistol as his man handed him his end of the cord. Baring his teeth, he tied it through his mount’s bridle and gave it a tug, testing its soundness and jerking Gotrek’s arm. ‘It’s easy to lose yourself on the moors, dwarf, and it’s hard country.’ Digging his heels into the spurs, Konrad urged the grey mare to sidestep, hauling Gotrek after it. Some of the mounted men laughed, causing Konrad to grin. ‘And I want to be sure you can keep up.’
Worried more for Konrad’s poor horse than for Gotrek, Felix mounted with considerably less drama. He was by nobody’s measure an expert but he did not hold the entire equine species to the same degree of visceral distrust as did Gotrek. His reins were in the hands of a tall, lean man, green eyed and gaunt. The rider’s cheeks were stubbled with coarse blond hair and he regarded Felix with a reptilian impassivity. The man offered a smile of neatly missing teeth that travelled no further than his thin lips.
‘Caul Schlanger, meinen herr.’ The man’s accent was an odd mix but, to one as well journeyed as Felix, the sibilant slither of Sylvanian vowels was unmistakable. He looked more like a footpad than a soldier. Felix shifted position in the saddle to satisfy himself that his scabbard remained in easy reach. Caul caught the surreptitious glances and licked his lips, fondling a throwing knife. ‘No ideas now.’
Felix looked away, hoping to be able to ignore him.
Rudi had not been granted a mount of his own. The big lunk called Torsten had remounted on Konrad’s order and pulled Rudi into the saddle in front of him. Rudi’s hands were bound and placed in his lap, arms pinned by Torsten’s as the thuggish horseman hugged him to his chest in order to keep a good hold on his horse’s reins. Ahead of him, to Felix’s right, Konrad was fighting to make his grey walk in a straight line while Gotrek yanked boisterously on the cord, pulling its muzzle back every time it tried to turn away. Gotrek cackled a little louder with Konrad’s increasing fury. With a snarl, the captain tried to ignore him and barked final orders to the two men, Wolfgang and Klaus, who would be following on foot.
Caul Schlanger pulled Felix back around with a fierce yank on his reins.
‘Caul!’
At Konrad’s command, Caul’s demeanour shifted from leering bully to weary professional with such seamlessness that Felix thought he might have been knocked out and imagined the entire last minute. ‘Captain,’ Caul replied with a bare nod in lieu of a salute and guided his horse forward, reining it in once he and Felix stood level with Konrad
‘Anselm, Matthaus,’ Konrad barked. ‘Ride ahead in case any more of the Beast’s minions lie in wait for us. No more prisoners. These three will repent soon enough.’ The two riders saluted mid-spur and thundered into the encroaching fog without a word. ‘Torsten. Two lengths behind. Keep that wretch from my sight. The rest of you…’ He smiled, sour as spoiled milk. ‘Be ready to blow his brains out should his friends try something heroic.’
Rudi reddened with useless fury as Torsten scratched his bristled chin against his temples and laughed.
Gotrek looked up towards Felix, one massive hand drawn ahead of him by Konrad’s horse. ‘If anything happens, manling, I’ll remember that this was your idea.’
‘Ride!’ yelled Konrad, spurring his mount into a trot, accelerating slowly into a canter that Gotrek, already breathing as though he meant it, could match. Dwarfs may not have been renowned for their fleetness of foot, but they knew how to cover ground when moved to do so. And Gotrek was as tough as they came.
Felix would not like to wager on whose legs would give out first, the dwarf or the horse.
Caul followed next with Felix’s horse in tow, the thunder of hooves following like a curse as the remaining horse
men adopted formation at their rear. Felix’s belly lurched at the sudden sensation of speed, powerful groups of muscle shifting against his thighs. Felix had learned the basics of horsemanship as a boy, all part of his father’s noble aspirations for his sons, but neither he nor poor bookish Otto had ever been a natural. He clung to the beast’s neck as it tore the bracken beneath its hooves, focusing on staying in the saddle. It would have been hard enough at the best of times. Without the illusion of control granted by reins in the hand, it was like fighting a duel with an unfamiliar weapon and one hand behind his back.
The riders said nothing as they rode. All except Rudi. Felix could hear his muttered prayers even over the hooves of half a dozen horses plus one. If Torsten, or anyone else for that matter, was listening at all, they certainly did not care. Periodically, either one of Anselm or Matthaus would hove into view, cry an ‘all clear’ to Konrad, then turn, keep pace for a few lengths, and pull away at speed to disappear once again into the mist.
With a crawling of flesh, Felix noted that Caul was still staring at him, unblinking, perfectly comfortable guiding both their horses at speed to finger his knife through a suggestive twirl. His regard made Felix uncomfortable. There was something unhealthy about the man’s interest that Felix could not fathom. He fervently hoped that he was not to be left alone with him when they arrived at their destination
With a wry smile that had Caul frowning in consternation, Felix accepted that he was fretting over the snotling in his pantry as a green horde roared over the hill. He was worrying over one man when, for all he knew, these riders bore him toward a nest of vampires.
And the clutches of a mad baron’s witch-finders.
A sensation of falling, of drowning in frozen honey, then the world snapped into plane.
Hurrlk’s feet struck solid earth.
The ground was bedded with pine needles, the sun intense through the tangled fingers of the forest. Hurrlk reached out. His claws wrapped fully around the bole of the nearest tree. It trembled, offended by his unnatural feel.
It had not been there before.
‘Saved.’ The whispered hiss passed through his minions. They clung to the shadows, avoiding the sun like a sickness, but their relief was palpable. Hurrlk felt his thoughts begin to clear, as if the mists he had left behind had been of the mind rather than of the land. There would be no pursuit here. Even if there was it need not be feared. Out there he was weak, confused.