Chapter Three

 

 

“So you are the famed Otto Viksberg, hero of the battle of the Waldenstein?”

Viksberg, his breastplate and gorget sparkling beneath the chandeliers of the palatial ballroom, bowed towards the young woman who gazed up at him with such puppy-dog admiration in her eyes.

She was perhaps the twelfth who had approached him tonight, and the ball had hardly begun. The ice sculptures still had sharp beaks and hard claws, through the windows Hergig’s roofs could still be seen in the dusk, and the most fashionable of guests had just arrived.

“I’m hardly a hero, madam,” Viksberg replied, modestly dropping his eyes and peering down her bodice. Despite the fact that she was a count’s niece, she didn’t seem to mind his indelicate attentions. Quite the opposite.

“But you risked your life to recover the standard,” she insisted, and wriggled seductively beneath his gaze. “You must have been the bravest man there.”

“Not at all.” He glanced briefly up to meet her eyes. “The bravest men died on the battlefield. I was merely unfortunate to lose the standard so close to the city walls.”

It was the standard reply. Complete nonsense, of course. Those who had stayed to die had been idiots, not heroes. Still, it was what people wanted to hear, and one of the more successful of the lies he had polished over the last few weeks.

It hardly seemed credible now that he had actually considered going into exile after the battle. He had been terrified that the solid tactical good sense he had shown in fleeing would be misconstrued, and even if he wasn’t hung for desertion he would have become a social pariah. It was only on the second morning of his flight that the extent of his good fortune dawned upon him. The battle had been a complete slaughter. There was nobody, nobody at all, who could accuse him of anything.

At least, nobody who could accuse him of anything and prove it.

The orchestra, the finest in Hochland, struck up a waltz and Viksberg’s admirer cooed happily.

“This is my favourite piece,” she told him. “Would you care to dance?”

Viksberg did. Before he had become a hero only the most desperate daughters of Hergig’s poorest families had ever asked him to dance. Not anymore, though. Now he was not just the toast of society, but the baron’s newest colonel. He swirled the girl around the dance floor, and if he squeezed her tight she squeezed him even more tightly back.

Before the music stopped Viksberg felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned, one eyebrow raised in annoyance.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t cut in,” he told the young man who had accosted him.

“This is my sister,” the interloper said. “I would be grateful if you would unhand her.”

Viksberg glared at him, considered arguing, and then changed his mind. He didn’t like the set of the brother’s jaw, or the width of his shoulders. And anyway, there were plenty of other women.

Hiding his embarrassment by rolling his eyes, he kissed his partner’s gloved hand and retreated, the sound of squabbling siblings following him.

“Very wise, Viksberg.”

Viksberg looked down to see the provost marshal, Otto Steckler, smirking up at him. Whereas Viksberg was tall and angular, as he believed all true aristocrats were, the provost marshal was a squat, solidly built man. But beneath the bulk of hard muscle and soft fat he was as physically agile as he was quick-witted.

He needed to be. Keeping the baron’s regiments fed and clothed and armed, not to mention housed and disciplined and paid, was no job for a fool. Although the provost marshal enjoyed neither the prestige nor the glory of a field commander, he certainly wielded more authority.

That was one reason why Viksberg so disliked him. The other was the look of suspicion that always glittered in his beady little eyes. It always made Viksberg feel uneasy. Ignoring the feeling, he laughed easily and gestured towards the young woman who was now stomping off, her brother trailing behind her.

“No point in causing trouble between a brother and sister, Steckler,” he said indulgently.

“No point in getting into a duel with some young tough either, eh?” The provost marshal winked insolently.

Viksberg shrugged.

“Anyway,” the provost marshal continued, “I just thought I’d drop by to let you know that another survivor has just turned up. He’s in a hell of a state, but he should live. It will be interesting to hear about the battle from another point of view. Even a humble captain’s.”

Viksberg froze. He tried to force a look of uninterest onto his face, then realising that this was inappropriate, tried for sympathy instead. The suspicion in the provost marshal’s eyes turned to contempt.

“A captain, provost marshal?” Viksberg asked him, his voice croaking. “From what regiment?”

“One of the halberdiers. At least, I’d say so from his build. We’ll find out in due course. He’s at the hospital of the Merciful Sisters of Shallya at the moment, and you know how skilled they are in healing a man. At keeping him breathing. And talking.”

Viksberg swallowed a lump in his throat. It felt as big as the knot in a hangman’s rope.

“I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say,” the provost marshal continued, looking at the glittering crowds that eddied and swirled across the dance floor.

“Excuse me,” Viksberg told him weakly. “I want a drink.”

The provost marshal watched the younger man plough through the crowd towards the nearest table.

Then he turned and, a smile of satisfaction playing across his chubby features, slipped from the room. Making the arrogant little fraud sweat had been enjoyable, but as usual he had a thousand and one more important tasks to be doing.

 

When Viksberg slipped from the ball and into the night, he had a bottle of peach brandy with him. He would need it, he knew. He would so desperately need it.

After stopping at his quarters to swap his embroidered tunic for a hooded cloak, he made his way through the darkness towards the hospital. The streets were swarming with refugees and those who preyed upon them. The darkness was alive with screams and arguments and sobs. In the occasional splashes of light Viksberg saw miserable knots of humanity huddled in every available corner. Some stretched their hands out as he hurried by, but others just stared, their eyes dead.

Viksberg cursed them as he made his way through the winding alleys of the weavers’ quarter and then up the hill to the hospital.

It wasn’t until he arrived at the always-open doors that led into the building that he hesitated. They led into a lamplit courtyard, and after the gloom of the street he had scurried down, everything seemed awfully bright. Bright enough to reveal the snarls and grimaces of the gargoyles which hovered against the night sky above, and certainly bright enough for the porters who slouched at their post to recognise him.

To recognise him and to remember him.

Viksberg dithered, shifting from one foot to the other as he waited in the shadows. Then he took a long, gurgling swig of the brandy he had brought with him and, riding the temporary flash of courage it brought, he stepped into the yard.

“You, porter,” he said to one of the men who guarded the courtyard and the doors which led off from it. “I’ve come to visit one of the patients.”

If the porter liked the tone of Viksberg’s voice he did a good impression of hiding it. He merely exchanged a glance with his companion and spat dangerously close to Viksberg’s feet. Typical, Viksberg thought, and produced a coin. It glittered in the lamp light with a lustre that was impossible to ignore.

“Visiting hours are over,” the porter told him, scratching his armpit with the cudgel he was armed with.

“They are,” his companion agreed. “They’re over.”

Another coin appeared between Viksberg’s fingers, as similar to the first as the two porters were to each other.

The two men exchanged another glance.

“Who is it you wanted to see?” the first one enquired with a forced insouciance.

“We would need to know,” the second explained.

“A captain,” Viksberg told him. “A halberdier. I hear he’s in quite a bad way.”

“I know who you mean. But no, not him. He’s in close confinement. If Mother bleedin’ Superior finds out we’ve let members of the public go traipsing through his room we’ll be out on our arses.”

“Without a penny.”

Viksberg sighed theatrically, although he was relieved. The less eager these two were to talk about his visit the better, and they would hardly care to discuss accepting a bribe.

“Well, in consideration for your trouble, then…” he plucked another coin from his purse and offered all three to the first porter, who took them with an expression of a man doing him a huge favour.

“What about mine?” his partner asked. Viksberg, whose unease was growing every moment he stood in the lamp light, bit back his curse and gave the man his due. He tried not to look smug as, with a long-suffering expression on his face, the first porter led Viksberg into the depths of the hospital.

They made their way down twisting corridors lit by small lamps in glazed alcoves, and through tiny courtyards surrounded by towering walls. Occasionally the porter, his ears attuned to the footsteps of the sisters, would freeze with the instinctive caution of some wild thing in a forest, or suddenly veer off down a side passage. After perhaps fifteen minutes of this circuitous route Viksberg noticed that the porter was fidgeting with his cudgel, twisting it between his hands as if he were a child with a security blanket.

Eventually he stopped outside an oaken door.

“He’s inside,” he said with a quiet misery. “But we shouldn’t really be in here.”

“If the sisters catch us, I’ll explain,” Viksberg reassured him, and took another swig of brandy to prepare himself for the ordeal ahead.

“It’s not that. It’s just that this part… well, it’s haunted.”

Viksberg smiled weakly and patted the porter on the shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he said, glad to have so easily found the means of getting rid of the man. “I’ll find my own way out after I’ve seen him.”

The porter hesitated, torn between the ragged remains of his sense of duty and superstitious dread.

“Go on,” Viksberg told him. “I might be here for a while.”

There was a distant scream. It was too much for the porter. With a thankful expression lighting his beady eyes, he turned and retreated swiftly down the passageway. Viksberg desperately wished that he could follow him.

But no. No, he had to make sure.

He waited until the porter had scuttled around the corner then lifted the latch on the door and stepped into the injured man’s bed chamber. The narrow cell was lit by a single oil lamp which sat on a shelf beside the bed. In the flickering light it was impossible to make out much of the bed’s occupant. His head was swathed in bandages, and one eye was covered in linen gauze which was stained yellow with either ointment or pus.

“Who’s there?” the patient rasped out, and with a thrill of horror Viksberg recognised the voice. It was no more than a shade of the barrack-room bark that it had once been, but he recognised it.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he choked back a sob of terror. This place was haunted after all. Haunted by the living.

“It’s just me, captain,” Viksberg said, stooping over the man he’d left to die on the battlefield. “I’ve just come to make sure that you’re all right.”

He stooped over the wounded soldier, and saw the cast that bound one leg and the webbing that held his bandaged arms in place. Now that he was so close Viksberg could smell the sweet, gangrenous stink of corruption. There was no doubt now that it was poison that was weeping from his bandaged eye.

The other eye was still bright. When it focussed on Viksberg it grew brighter still.

“You!” the captain said, and the word was a curse. “You coward. You deserter.”

Viksberg clutched at his throat as though the noose was already around it and stepped away. His back hit the unforgiving stone of the wall as his nemesis tried to sit up.

“I’ll see you hang,” the captain hissed, then with a sob of frustration, allowed his body to fall weakly back onto the bed.

In one terrible moment Viksberg saw the future that was laid out before him. The public humiliation. The court-martial. The execution. The prospect lent him a resolve he had never known that he possessed.

“It’s not my fault,” he told the patient as he rolled up his cloak.

“It is,” the soldier sneered at him, teeth as sharp and yellow as one of the beasts that had almost done for him. “And you’ll pay for it, Viksberg. You’ll pay. I’ll see you swing, and I’ll spit on your corpse afterwards. I’ll… wait. Wait, what are you doing?”

They were to be his last words. Emboldened by the dying man’s weakness, and driven by the terror of what his loose tongue would bring, Viksberg had acted. He brought the bundled cloak down over his persecutor’s face, and pressed it into his nose and mouth. The man struggled, but the fire in his blood had been chilled by the approach of Morr. He flailed helplessly, his broken bones and ruined muscles useless against his assailant’s desperate strength.

“You’re making me do this,” Viksberg told him and, biting back a sob, leant forwards so that his entire weight was on the rolled-up cloth. Soon his victim stopped moving. Viksberg, fearing some ruse, just pressed down harder. Something snapped beneath him and finally he relented, stepping back to view his handiwork.

The patient was dead. One eye stared accusingly upwards, and the blood from his broken nose had already stopped running. Viksberg reached out and, with one trembling hand, felt for a pulse. There was none. He hadn’t expected there to be.

“So,” he told the corpse. “I did it.”

The words were the key to open a floodgate of terror. What would happen if he were caught? If that door opened, right now, and somebody stepped in? Or what if, he wondered hysterically, somebody had been watching through the key hole? The porter, or perhaps one of the sisters?

Seized with a sudden, unreasoning impulse to hide the evidence of his crime, Viksberg’s eyes fell upon the oil lamp. The glass reservoir was still over half-full. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, and stared at it. He stood like that for a full five minutes, mesmerised by the slosh of oil and the flicker of the flame. Then he placed it on the linen bedclothes that now served his victim as a shroud. They were so well mended, these sheets. So well laundered.

So perfectly flammable.

“You made me do it,” he told the corpse accusingly as, with the hilt of his dagger, he smashed the glass.

The ferocity of the flame took him by surprise. He whimpered as he staggered away from it, and suddenly it occurred to him that he’d made an awful mistake.

“No,” he said, and looked aghast at the tongues of fire that were already licking their way up to the desiccated timbers of the ceiling.

“Oh no.” He flapped ineffectually at the burning bed. “I didn’t mean it!”

But mean it or not, the fire had taken hold with a ferocious enthusiasm. Viksberg’s eyebrows were singed and his skin was already beginning to blister when he staggered out of the room and slammed the door shut.

The hallway was gloomy after the eye-watering brightness of the fire, and it took Viksberg a moment to realise that he wasn’t alone.

“What have you done?” the voice asked.

Viksberg turned, his face a mask of horror, to see the youth who had spoken. Beneath his mop of red hair he was skinny, perhaps in his mid-teens, and dressed in the grey shift of the foundling hospital.

“I heard arguing,” the boy said, and it seemed to Viksberg that the accusation in his wide eyes was even more dangerous than the flames. His hand strayed to the hilt of his dagger. But before he could draw it the door exploded outwards with a roar of flame.

“Take me to the entrance,” Viksberg told the boy.

“This is your doing,” the boy said with a dull certainty.

“Move!” Viksberg raised his hand and the youth bolted.

As he followed his guide Viksberg heard the first cries of alarm ringing out behind him and then, over the quickening roar of the inferno, the first screams. One of the sisters barrelled into him, her robes undone and her hair awry. She bellowed a question at him, but he just pushed her aside and rushed on. The red-haired youngster he was following led him out into the courtyard where the two porters stood open-mouthed as they watched the first snicker of flames emerge from the roofs.

“Stop him,” Viksberg said, with an invention born of desperation. “He started the fire.”

The porter who had led him to the cell thought faster than at any time in his life. He saw Viksberg’s singed eyebrows. Saw his reddened skin. Saw that the only thing between him and the gallows was the scapegoat who was now running so conveniently towards him.

He swung his fist. There was a crunch as it connected with bone, and the fleeing youngster was knocked back to the cobbles, his eyes rolling back into his head.

“Better keep an eye on him,” Viksberg said with a shard of hysterical laughter in his voice. “Who knows what else an arsonist may be capable of?”

“Right you are, mein herr,” the porter replied, and as his companion started ringing the alarm bell, he tied the youngster up nice and tight and ready for the magistrates.

 

Since his narrow escape in the forest, Erikson had spent the nights in whatever sanctuary he could find and the mornings running to the next. After almost a fortnight of grudging accommodation and constant flight he had begun to grow scrawny and to suffer from a constant, bone-deep fatigue that never seemed to leave him. So it was that when he saw Hergig it was with the thankful joy of a pilgrim who has reached his shrine.

Although he had seen bigger cities he had not seen many better fortified. Perhaps because of the endless forests which lay in constant wait for them, the Hochlanders built their walls well. As Erikson approached he studied the impressive height of the granite walls, and the fine masonry above the machicolations. Towers studded the walls, their arrow slits scowling down on the lands below, and the crenellations were alive with distant guards.

When he drew close enough to smell the cheerful reek of the city Erikson felt as though he were coming home. It had been a while since he had been in civilisation, and as he elbowed his way through the refugees that were camped outside the gates he became aware of quite how filthy, and how ragged, he was.

Well, that would never do.

After paying the toll to the gate keepers he set about finding a room in an inn. The fee was exorbitant, but he soon forgot about it.

First he spent an hour in a hip bath, scrubbing a month’s worth of grime from his skin and then carefully shaving around the military curves of his moustaches. When he had finished he was as pink as a newborn babe, and as hungry.

He ordered bread and stew, and then bread and sausages, and then bread and cheese, and finally half a dozen baked apples. He drank his way through a jug of wine while he did so, and then a couple of glasses of schnapps.

By the time he had finished he was so stuffed that he didn’t even have enough appetite left for the plump little serving girl who had been looking at him so invitingly. Instead he checked that his sword was loose in its sheath, made sure his purse was secure in his breeches and then curled up on the almost unbearable luxury of a stuffed mattress. For twelve hours he could have been described as sleeping the sleep of the dead, if the dead had snored with such impressive volume.

The next morning he awoke, stretched, and after a breakfast of goat’s milk and pastries, went out to find a tailor. Only then, clean, shaved and resplendent in his finery, did he set out to hire his regiment.

 

* * *

 

He returned to his quarters that evening, if not worried, than at least concerned. After washing down a boiled ham with a gallon of ale he spent a while staring into the fire. It wasn’t until he took the serving girl to bed that he unburdened himself.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, Helga,” he told her as she lay with her head on his chest. “I’ve been in a dozen wars. More. But there are always men to be hired. Men desperate enough to want to fight.”

“Not here,” Helga told him, braiding her hair around her finger. “The baron has drafted every spare man into the regiments. He had to after he lost the last lot.”

Erikson smiled indulgently.

“Rulers always do that. It doesn’t mean anything. If men don’t want to fight, they can always find a way to escape. And if they are too slow-witted or infirm to do that, they’re no good anyway. Only the Bretonnians force men to fight, and a more miserable bunch of creatures you will never see. I fought them at Couronne once. We called it a great victory, but it was pathetic really. All they did was run around like a herd of sheep. The knights, though…”

He trailed off, remembering. The knights had been like something from a nightmare. Even when the cannon had opened up, the knights had still come on. If he hadn’t had the foresight to fill that hollow with sharpened stakes and then cover it over with bracken they would have killed his regiment to a man.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Helga said and, not liking the sudden dark mood that had seized him, poked him playfully. “You’re just being modest. Tell me about your battles.”

Erikson frowned.

“No. That’s no subject for the bedroom. I just need to think of where to find a couple of hundred men. Hard men. Or if not hard, at least desperate.”

“You have one hard man already,” Helga cooed, and Erikson stopped worrying and turned his attention to more pressing matters.

 

Hergig Gaol squatted amongst the squalor of the old tanners’ quarter. On the outside its walls were unmarked blind slabs of windowless granite, and although there were no battlements as such, the walls were topped with walkways. Crossbow-wielding guards prowled about on them with the indolent swagger of alley cats, half-hoping for a riot to provide a bit of target practice and relieve the boredom.

Unfortunately for them, there were seldom any riots in Hergig Gaol. Not any more. Not since Gort had taken over.

Nobody was really sure where the chief gaoler had come from, but all had heard the rumours about his sadistic genius for punishment. Even Erikson had heard some of the stories and now, sitting across from the infamous man in the stone-vaulted lair of his office, he could well believe them.

“Quite an impressive institution you have here, Herr Gort,” Erikson told the chief gaoler.

Gort accepted the compliment with a nod of his shaven head. His scalp seemed to be the only part of him not covered with hair. His beard was a dense thicket, and tufts of the same black hair curled out from his collar and his cuffs, and covered the fat little sausages of his fingers.

“I take my duties very seriously,” Gort replied. “Chief gaoler is a post many seek but few attain.”

“It must take real character to deal with such a lot of responsibility,” Erikson agreed, and looked out of the window into the grim little courtyard below. From their position in the gaoler’s office he could see every inch of the sand. Or at least he would have been able to if it hadn’t been hidden beneath a choked mass of humanity.

“It does.” Again Gort accepted the compliment with a nod. He refilled his guest’s glass with sweet white wine and then his own. They had been at this for half an hour already, but that was fine with him. He hadn’t become as rich as he had without developing a bloodhound’s nose for bribes, and the man who sat in front of him all but stank of gold.

“My job also involves responsibility,” Erikson finally explained. “I am a soldier, and a leader of soldiers. Sigmar gave me the ability to do both well, and I have been fighting his enemies all my life.”

Gort wasn’t impressed with the hard pride which flamed in his guest’s yellow eyes, but he was impressed by the ring of truth in his voice.

“There are certainly plenty of enemies about in Hochland,” he said carefully. “And not many soldiers to fight them.”

“Very true, Herr Gort. Very true. In such desperate times it is men like us, men of responsibility, who have to make do.”

The two men sat in a silence which might have been companionable if it hadn’t been so cautious.

It was Gort who broke it.

“Wouldn’t it be good if I could let you have some of those scoundrels?” He waved a podgy hand towards the prisoners below. Even though they were twenty feet away and on the other side of a window Erikson could see that some of them flinched at the gesture.

“It would be good,” Erikson nodded. “In fact, it’s an excellent idea.”

“Alas,” Gort sighed so deeply that his belly wobbled beneath his tunic, “regulations.”

And so saying he produced a hardbound book. It appeared in his hands as suddenly as a rabbit might appear in a conjuror’s hat, and he banged it down onto the table to emphasise its weight.

He and Erikson exchanged a long, cool glance, the hard stones of the mercenary’s eyes meeting their match in the unfathomable depths of the gaoler’s.

“It is well,” Erikson said, suddenly philosophical, “that men like us, men of responsibility, can improve upon regulations.”

“If only it were so.” Gort shook his head mournfully. “But as a humble servant of the baron, Sigmar bless him, my authority in that direction is limited.”

“You are too modest.” Erikson waved the claim away. “I am sure that your judgement and discretion are invaluable when it comes to running this place. By the way, I noticed a small shrine on my way up to your office. Who is it to?”

“Ah yes, the shrine,” Gort nodded, happy to follow the sudden change of subject. “It is to Shallya. A lot of our guests have need of her after they arrive here.”

He grinned at his own humour, then realised what he had said. “Not that the prisoners aren’t in excellent condition, of course. But some of them are so aggressive. Yes, they love to fight.”

“Indeed.” Erikson allowed a look of scepticism to flit briefly across his face. “Anyway, I was thinking of making a donation to you. For the shrine.”

“Very generous of you.” Gort contrived to display a smile of wide-eyed innocence. “How much were you thinking?”

“One hundred crowns,” Erikson decided. “Not only that, but I’ll take a couple of hundred of those reprobates under my cognisance. I doubt if they’ll be much good, but they might as well die defending the city as in it.”

The chief gaoler hissed through his teeth, and gazed out over the inmates below so lovingly that each and every one of them might have been his favourite son.

“Let us try some schnapps,” he decided happily. “While we discuss your generous offer.”

Negotiations continued well into the night, and by the time Erikson left he was almost as light in heart as he was in wallet. He had his war and he had his men. Now all he needed was his commission.

Life, he decided as he staggered back to the inn, was good.

 

The feeling stayed with Erikson the next morning as he looked down at his new regiment. The chief gaoler had found him a round ten dozen, and true to his word they all seemed to be more or less fit and healthy.

At least, as fit and healthy as the inmates of a gaol can be.

Erikson stood on a box in the gaol courtyard, which had been cleared of all the other inmates. He held a charter in his hand. Multicoloured ribbons fluttered from the heavy vellum scroll like so many battle flags, and Erikson wielded it as though it were a marshal’s baton.

“Gentlemen,” he began, and his voice was loud enough to fill a parade ground, never mind the narrow confines of this mean yard. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Free Captain Joachim Erikson, late of Stirland, Kislev and Bretonnia. My god is Sigmar and my business is war. And, make no mistake, gentlemen, business is what it is.”

He paused and studied them, gauging their reaction. It was not one to inspire confidence in a military commander. They looked sullen, suspicious and resentful, and that was only amongst those who weren’t looking morosely into space.

Erikson didn’t care. It didn’t really matter what they were now. It was what he would make of them that counted.

“At the moment,” he reminded them, “you are prisoners. I don’t care why you are prisoners. I don’t care if you are innocent or guilty. All I care about is that, outside those walls, the forests are alive with vermin. Dangerous, murderous vermin that need to be destroyed. If you are willing, I will help you to destroy them.”

“Why in the name of Ranald’s balls would we want to do that?” one of the men asked. Erikson studied him with a keen interest. He wasn’t an imposing man. Beneath his baggy clothes he had a scrawny frame and a pigeon chest, and beneath his ragged blond hair his blue eyes twinkled out from a hollow-cheeked face.

And yet, although his shoulders were narrow there was a confident set to them, and although his face was bony it showed neither fear nor respect.

“A good question,” Erikson told him. “And it deserves a good answer. If you fight you will have both your freedom and a share in the spoils. Just because we are a free company doesn’t mean that we fight for free. Far from it.”

He winked at them and grinned, his teeth dazzling white in this gloomy place.

“Not much good to a dead man,” the sceptic said.

“Oh don’t worry about that,” Erikson told him, his grin spreading even as his eyes grew cold. “If you stay here you’ll be dead men soon enough. Imagine what will happen when the beasts break in here and find you all chained up like suckling pigs outside a butcher’s shop.”

“Come now,” another man interrupted. His voice was a deep baritone, and Erikson turned to see that it belonged to a thickset man with the shaved head and black robes of a Sigmarite priest. “Do you really believe that Hergig will fall to a pack of beasts?”

“Yes,” Erikson told him simply. “If we don’t all fight. Those same beasts have already destroyed one of your baron’s armies and you, my friends, are next.”

“Unless we fight,” the man said, and appeared to be thinking it over. Those around him watched in silence, their evident respect lending the man a gravity despite his tattered robes. “Well, then, I suppose I will fight. Better to face the enemy free and armed than locked in cages.”

There was a murmur of agreement, and it occurred to Erikson that he had found his first sergeant. Then laughter, as harsh and cold as a Reikwald winter, echoed out.

“Fight by all means,” an old man said. “Why not? But don’t be fools. You heard the good captain here. An army has been wiped out. An army of state troopers. Well trained. Well led. Well armed. What chance will we have?”

“I have heard something of the battle,” Erikson told him. “It would seem that the commander underestimated the threat. That won’t happen again. And you will be trained and armed. And fed,” he added, noting how skinny most of them were.

“That’s only the half of it,” the old man spat with disgust. “The regiments train for years, each man fitting into his formation just as each formation fits into the others. I should know. I was a halberdier myself for twenty years. A sergeant.”

“Then we have reason to thank Sigmar already,” Erikson told him. “I will have need of your talents. We all will. If we are to play our small part in the baron’s host, then we will need to train, and that relentlessly.”

“I don’t care about that,” somebody else interrupted, a young voice full of determination. “I just want to fight.”

Erikson looked down into the lad’s eye’s. He barely seemed old enough to be here. Like so many of his comrades he had a wasted frame, but beneath the red mop of his hair his eyes glittered with a hatred that filled Erikson with a wary satisfaction. He had seen that sort of hatred before. Had seen what it could do.

“Why do you want to fight?” Erikson found himself asking.

“Those things killed my family when I was a babe,” he replied simply, “and I have nothing else.”

There was a heartbeat of silence before another man took the opportunity to complain.

“It’s all very well for those who are to be hanged,” he said, his voice an irritating whine, “but what about those of us who aren’t?”

Erikson allowed himself a look of cool contempt as he regarded the complainant. The man had weak eyes beneath a receding hairline, and they refused to meet Erikson’s. But Erikson didn’t care. Like a good angler he knew when the time was right to strike, and it was now.

“Nobody is forcing you to sign anything,” he told the assembled men. “I don’t want slaves, I want comrades, which is why the choice is yours. You either join up, in which case you’ll have freedom, full bellies and a chance to make your fortune in this war. Or you don’t. You stay here and wait for the beasts to find you. So what’s it to be?”

“Well if you put it like that,” the first man to have spoken said, “I think I’d be a fool not to. Where do I put my mark?”

“Right here,” Erikson told him, unfurling the parchment and hoping that nobody would realise that the text he had written so beautifully across it was pure nonsense.