The duke was still drinking heavily as he danced and something about his desire for oblivion repulsed Ratboy. He wandered out onto the battlements, to clear his head. As he stepped out into the moonlight he turned his collar up against the cold and looked down on the sleeping army. Gaudy yellow and black tents were pitched all over the courtyard and the lights of torches moved back and forth between them, as the quartermaster and his men prepared for the next day’s march. The rain had eased to a fine, billowing drizzle, but it quickly seeped through Ratboy’s clothes, chilling his slender limbs. After a few minutes he headed back inside to find a corner to curl up in.
As he approached the door, a strange noise caught his attention and he looked out over the other side of the tower. The scene below chilled him even more than the rain and the memory of it stayed with him for a long time afterwards. The penitent villagers from Gotburg were still awake and had crowded around Raphael’s litter in prayer. They had propped up his twisted, broken corpse with a stick and as his glassy eyes stared lifelessly out over the courtyard, they called out to him for guidance and lashed themselves repeatedly with sticks, mingling their blood with the soft Ostland rain.
Chapter Seven
Righteous Fury
They headed west, with the sun at their backs, looking for the war.
Ratboy gazed back over his shoulder at Castle Lüneberg, silhouetted against the dawn glow. He thought he could still just make out the lonely figure of the duke, with his hand raised in a silent farewell. ‘What will become of him?’ he muttered, turning to his master.
The priest replied with a hint of irritation in his voice. ‘What concern is that of yours? He’s made his choice and we must respect it.’ He shrugged his hammer into a more comfortable position on his back and kept his gaze on the road ahead. ‘Such hedonism rarely ends well.’
Gryphius’s army marched behind them, carving a noisy path through the dewy forest glades, like a fast flowing river of yellow cloth and burnished metal.
Wolff, Anna and Ratboy rode at the head of the column, alongside the general and his officers. Trailing behind the main force came the flagellants, still carrying Raphael’s corpse on the slowly disintegrating litter. Ratboy looked back at them in confusion. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘the villagers from Gotburg – there seems to be more of them than before.’
Wolff nodded, without turning to face his acolyte. ‘Such fervour is infectious. In times such as these, people are forever on the look out for salvation. Raphael’s new followers are mostly Lüneberg’s former servants, plus some of the injured soldiers who were still hiding out in the castle. I imagine their numbers will continue to swell as we approach Mercy’s End.’
Ratboy shook his head in amazement, looking at the broken body on the litter. ‘But don’t they realise that Raphael has died?’
Wolff looked around with a dangerous glint in his eyes. ‘Watch your words, boy. Who knows what they think. Some of them may believe he’s in a trance, and that he is communicating directly with Sigmar himself. And it may even be that they see things more clearly than you. The edifying effects of hunger, and constant pain can have unforeseen results. Who are you to be so mocking of their faith?’ He slowed his horse, until he was riding beside Ratboy. ‘Such scepticism does not become you. If you truly wish to enter the priesthood you must understand how important such fierce belief can be. It’s all too easy to let physical comfort come between you and religious truth.’
‘So you think they might be right?’ replied Ratboy, incredulously. ‘That he hasn’t thrashed himself to death, he’s just in some kind of holy sleep?’
Wolff shrugged. ‘My thoughts on the matter are irrelevant. I’ve seen many things that defy explanation, and have learned enough humility to bite my tongue rather than make rash judgements. The only thing I’m sure of is the limits of my own knowledge. My understanding of the spiritual realm is like a single candle, flickering in the dark. There is much that I cannot see.’
Ratboy blushed and looked away from his master, feeling that he had made a fool of himself.
Wolff noticed his embarrassment and softened his voice. ‘There are other considerations, too. The role of a warrior priest is to ensure the survival of Sigmar’s heirs and also the survival of His doctrine. Sometimes that relies as much on tactical thought as it does on revelation. Soon, we’ll need to fight our way through an army of immense size. From what the duke told me last night, Mormius’s army numbers in the thousands. And somehow we must slice through that foul canker to reach von Raukov’s men.’
He looked Ratboy in the eye, lowering his voice even more. ‘You know that I’ve had doubts of my own recently. Even I began to question my purpose, Anselm. After all these years of fruitless, endless war, I had begun to doubt that I could have any effect.’ He pounded his fist against the dull metal of his breastplate with a hollow clang. ‘But now I know I have a duty to fulfil. My own brother is ahead of us, marching with von Raukov’s army. And I know now he’s filled with corruption of the worst kind. Who can say what he intends to do, but I have to find him.’ He patted the broad knife wedged in his belt. ‘And stop him, somehow.’
He waved his gauntleted hand at the lurching, bloody figures trailing behind the litter. ‘I have a suspicion that such fanatical faith will be invaluable. I can guarantee you that even if every man in Gryphius’s army lay dead around them those villagers would still be defending their prophet. With their hands and teeth if they had to.’
After that Ratboy rode in silence, mulling over his master’s words. Was Wolff saying that Raphael’s followers were inspired, or merely useful? Surely they were indulging in a kind of idolatry? The litter was strewn with a strange mixture of objects, all placed there by the flagellants. Mounds of herbs and berries were draped over the corpse, and sheets of parchment were nailed to the wood, covered in manically scrawled prayers and poems. Someone had even fastened a wooden hammer to Raphael’s rigid right hand, which bounced from side to side as the litter gouged its way along the forest path. Ratboy shivered. He couldn’t be sure whether he was imagining it or not, but he thought there was a sickly sweet smell of rotting meat on the breeze, coming from Raphael’s discoloured flesh.
The morning wore on and Ratboy’s thoughts wandered onto less gruesome matters. Anna was riding a few horses ahead of him and each time she turned to give him an encouraging smile, he felt his stomach flip. Since talking to the duke she had regained a little of her straight-backed dignity and even seemed eager for the challenge ahead. Ratboy sensed that despite the horror of losing her matriarch and fellow sisters, there was still a mysterious strength in her. She fascinated him. Even riding alongside such strutting, feathered popinjays as Gryphius’s captains, Ratboy found her simple white robe utterly hypnotic. He followed the cloth as it shifted up and down her pale, slender arms.
With a rush of shame, he noticed that Wolff was studying him intently. He smiled awkwardly at his master and returned his gaze to the road ahead.
There was a clatter of boots and hooves as the army crossed an old wooden bridge and left the shelter of the trees for a while, marching out across an expanse of wide, open grassland that stretched ahead of them for several miles. The musicians struck up a jaunty tune and danced around the marching troops, leaping up and down in the tall grass and trailing brightly coloured streamers behind them as they sang. As the hours wore on, Ratboy grew to hate their piping whistles and clanging bells. He glared at their painted, bestial masks, willing them to be silent, but their energy seemed boundless.
Gradually, the sun overtook the army and began to descend ahead of them, causing the soldiers to pull their helmets down a little lower over their faces and squint as they rode.
‘What’s this?’ slurred Gryphius as a rider headed back towards him out of the sunset. The general’s face was flushed from the previous night’s drinking and as he leant forward in his saddle to see who was approaching, he clutched protectivel
y at his bloated stomach.
The slender figure of Christoff made his way down the line of men with his chin lifted haughtily. It looked to Ratboy as though he imagined himself to be the Emperor himself, inspecting a trooping of the colour. He bowed almost imperceptibly to the general. ‘Obermarshall,’ he said, ‘the scouts have spotted an abandoned farmhouse and they suggest it would make an ideal place to camp tonight. The owners have all been slaughtered, but not before they dug several trenches and fortified the outbuildings, so it will be easily defended.’
‘Much good it did the previous occupants,’ said Gryphius, trying to smile through his nausea. ‘Very well, let’s head for the farm.’ He grabbed Christoff’s puffed sleeve. ‘Just make sure there’s a reasonable meal waiting for me when I get there. No more of this northern rubbish. I want something with a little flavour, not another bucket of grey mud.’
Christoff tipped his plumed hat. ‘Of course, obermarshall.’
The army pitched its tents with the quick efficiency of men eager to get their heads down. As twilight fell over the old farm, Ratboy hunkered down next to a fire with the other servants, while Wolff and the general’s captains pored over maps and discussed the impending battle. He stretched his aching limbs out across the grass with a groan of relief, and as he drifted off to sleep a strange jumble of images filled his head: Anna’s delicate features morphed and decayed into Raphael’s greying flesh, before being replaced by his master’s flashing eyes, scowling down at him from a pulpit.
‘Sigmar’s blood,’ exclaimed Gryphius, as he reined in his horse and looked down over the valley below. ‘Is that an army or a nation?’
A silver thread of sunlight was just beginning to glimmer on the horizon and as the dawn light grew, it picked out tens of thousands of men, sprawled across the landscape, carpeting the fields as far as the eye could see in either direction. Pitched in the centre of the valley were a couple of command tents, but mostly the soldiers had just fallen where they stopped, sleeping in ditches and the hollows of trees.
Ratboy grimaced at the sight of the army. It marred the landscape like a dark, ugly scar. Severed heads dangled from their bloodstained banners and brutal, iron weapons lay scattered across the grass. A few of the soldiers were already beginning to rise; pouring filthy water over their greasy manes and flexing their fur-clad muscles as they looked across the fields towards the growing dawn.
‘Down,’ hissed Wolff, steering his horse back away from the brow of the hill and dismounting. ‘A few more minutes and we’ll be visible.’
The others followed suit, leading their horses back down the hill and then crawling back up to the hilltop to peer out through the tall grass at the marauders.
‘That’s it,’ said Gryphius, grinning at his captains and pointing past Mormius’s army to a tall, slender shape on the horizon. It was hard to see clearly in the half-light, but the general had no doubt as to the building’s name. ‘Mercy’s End,’ he hissed, drumming his fists against the ground like an excited child. ‘It’s the ruined castle that Lüneberg told us about. That’s Ostland’s final hope. And we’re just in time to join arms with our northern brothers, before they make their last stand.’ He turned to Wolff. ‘We must strike now while the enemy are still rising. We could slaughter half of them in their sleep. It’s all they deserve, the filthy blasphemers.’
Wolff shook his head. ‘There are so many of them,’ he muttered, clenching and unclenching his gauntleted hands as he looked down on the monstrous shapes. ‘We’d never make it through them all.’ He signalled for the others to crawl back down the hill. Once they were sure it was safe they climbed to their feet. Gryphius’s captains all looked to Wolff for his guidance, a little unnerved by the brittle grin on their general’s face.
‘We’ve been very lucky, it’s true,’ said the priest. ‘From what the duke said, this Mormius has been driving his men mercilessly for weeks without rest, but we’ve managed to arrive at the end of the one night they’ve been allowed to sleep.’
Gryphius drew his sword and held it aloft. ‘I hear you, Brother Wolff. This is a unique chance. We’ll take them all on. The people of Mercy’s End will wake up to see a pile of corpses at their gates.’
Wolff grasped the general’s arm and snarled at him. ‘They outnumber us ten to one, obermarshall, if not more. We’d never reach the citadel.’
‘So what are you suggesting,’ snapped Gryphius, freeing his arm and replying in a tone of haughty disdain. ‘That we return to Castle Lüneberg and wait there to be slaughtered in our beds?’
‘No,’ replied Wolff. ‘Mercy’s End must endure, at least for a while, if Raukov’s army is to stand any chance of halting this incursion.’ He waved at the captains who were hanging on his every word. ‘And an army such as yours could make all the difference, obermarshall. But only if they aren’t slaughtered before they reach the citadel.’ He frowned. ‘We need some kind of diversion.’ He looked down the hillside at Gryphius’s army, and beyond, to the ragged lines of flagellants, prostrating themselves before Raphael’s corpse. ‘I have an idea,’ he said, and strode down the hill.
As the sun cleared the horizon, the flagellants descended on Mormius’s army, pouring down from the hills like the end of the world.
Ratboy shook his head in wonder. The fury of their charge was breathtaking. He finally understood his master’s respect for them. Raphael’s cult had swelled beyond all recognition into a terrifying horde of willing martyrs. Their eyes burned with holy wrath as they ripped into the side of the sleeping army. Their screeched prayers echoed around the hills and their wiry, scarred limbs flailed up and down, hacking furiously at the confused marauders.
‘Holy Sigmar,’ muttered Ratboy, as he watched the carnage from the other end of the valley. ‘They’re going to slaughter the whole army.’
For a while it seemed he might be right. As the drowsy marauders lurched to their feet, scrabbling around for their discarded weapons and blowing their horns to raise the alarm, the flagellants tore through their ranks in a frenzy of righteous bloodlust. They wore no armour, but seemed mindless of the vicious weapons that lashed out at their naked flesh. Even from the safety of the hilltop, Ratboy found it hard to see such bloody passion heading towards him.
‘What did you say to them?’ asked Anna, with a note of disgust in her voice. She grimaced as the flagellants threw their naked selves into the melee, ripping at the marauders’ faces with flails, clubs and broken, bloody fingernails. ‘You’ve sent them to their deaths,’ she muttered.
‘We prayed together for a while,’ said Wolff, ignoring the disapproval in her voice. ‘And then I explained the truth of the situation.’ He gestured to the litter behind them. Raphael’s rotting corpse was lashed securely to the planks, which in turn were strapped to a pair of horses, in readiness for the charge ahead. ‘There’s only one chance that their prophet could reach the safety of Mercy’s End, and it will require a great sacrifice on their part.’ He rubbed his powerful jaw as he watched the shocking violence below. ‘And sacrifice is the one thing they have no fear of.’
With a scrape of metal, the priest slid his great warhammer from his back and pointed it down at the battle. ‘Feast your eyes on this scene, my friends. Fix it deep in your hearts for all eternity. You will never again see such a beautiful display of pure, unshackled faith.’ As Raphael’s followers bathed in the blood of their foes, Wolff crossed himself with the sign of the hammer and muttered a prayer for them. ‘You’re witnessing Sigmar’s legacy in all its unstoppable glory. These people have His blood in their veins and His strength in their hearts. While such devotion still exists, this blessed Empire will never fail.’
He turned towards Gryphius. ‘Are your men ready, my lord? Our time is short. Their passion will only carry them so far. A few more minutes and the enemy will start to realise what a small force they’re facing. Then things will be over very quickly.’
The general�
��s eyes glistened with excitement as he fastened his winged helmet onto his head. He turned to his waiting army, arrayed on the hillside below. The yellow and black of their banners whipped gaily in the dawn light, and a thousand expectant faces looked back at him. ‘Sons of Averland,’ he cried, lifting his sword and turning his face to the sky. ‘Ride for your life! Ride for the Empire! Ride for Sigmar!’ With that he turned his horse and charged down the hill towards the enemy, screaming with fear and delight.
With a great thunder of hooves and armour, his troops charged after him.
‘Stay close,’ barked Wolff to Ratboy, as he snapped his reins and disappeared over the brow of the hill.
It was all Ratboy could do to cling desperately onto the reins of his horse as it careered wildly after the others. The general’s quartermaster had buried him in armour way too big for his wiry frame: an oversized hauberk, a billowing yellow tabard and a helmet that immediately fell down over his eyes, leaving him blind and helpless as he plummeted towards the enemy.
He dared to loose a hand from the reins and lift his visor. The eyes of the surrounding horses were rolling with terror as the army plunged into the valley at incredible speed. The world rushed by in such a sickening blur that Ratboy thought he might lose his breakfast. Wolff was directly ahead, leading the charge with Gryphius, holding his hammer before him like a lance and bellowing commands as he went.
Where’s Anna? wondered Ratboy suddenly, remembering that she had refused the offer of armour. He tried to look back, but it was too late. With a deafening crash, Gryphius’s men slammed into the enemy troops.
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