Chapter Six
In the grey chill of predawn the men rolled out of their blankets and formed ranks on the dew-slicked cobbles of their square. Despite the fact that the birds had barely begun to sing, the city all around them was alive with noise and movement. As the men shivered and thought wistfully of their bedrolls they could hear the marching feet and bellowed orders which echoed through Hergig, and the beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets.
Today, the baron’s army was going to meet the enemy in the fields beyond. Today they were going to war.
Erikson had dressed in his finery, his hat adorned with a blizzard of dyed feathers and his breastplate gleaming with a deep polish. Sergeant Alter, holding his halberd with an effortless panache, stood beside the captain and listened approvingly as he gave Porter and Gunter, the company’s newly appointed corporals, their instructions.
“Remember,” Erikson told them. “Our job is to keep the formation in the right shape. To keep the ranks in line and the files tight. In time we’ll practise other manoeuvres, but for today all we have to do is make sure that we keep our square tight, tight, tight.”
“Reminds me of a girl I knew once,” Porter said and licked his lips.
His comrades regarded him with expressions which ranged from amusement to contempt.
“She was a stickler for detail too.”
“This is no damned detail,” Alter told him. “The formation breaks, and we’re finished. All of us. I’ve seen it happen before. Once men start running, they’re easy meat.”
“But if the formation holds,” Erikson promised him, “we will have a good chance of coming out of this in one piece. And for today that’s all I want. No charges. No glory. No heroics. Just survival.”
“Sounds good to me, boss,” Porter told him.
“Address the officer by his proper rank,” Alter told him.
“Captain it is,” Porter said with a gracious bow.
“What you say makes sense,” Gunter said with the air of a man who had obviously been thinking. “But only so far. Let us not forget that we are here to smite the enemy. To clean him from our lands as Sigmar himself commanded us to do.”
His mild tone was belied by the hard edge of fanaticism. It shone in his eyes even in the gloom of the courtyard. Erikson and Alter exchanged a look.
“Trust me,” Erikson said, turning back to Gunter. “We’ll have plenty of chance to do that, and probably sooner than any of us would want.”
As if summoned by his words one of Ludenhof’s heralds arrived. He wore a breastplate and greaves over the gilded velvet of his uniform, and instead of the placid contentment which usually characterised the expression of the average palace servant, his features were drawn with tension.
“Captain Erikson?” he asked, his voice hoarse with anxiety. “It’s time for your company to go. Do you want me to show you the way to the gate?”
“Why not?” Erikson smiled easily and grasped him by one shoulder. “And don’t look so worried. By tonight we’ll be celebrating the victory.”
The herald looked at him, his eyes wide, and swallowed. For the first time Erikson noticed the grey bags of fatigue that lay beneath his eyes, and the way that his left cheek twitched. He frowned and wondered if using the man as a guide was such a good idea. Fear was as contagious as any plague. Fortunately, so was courage.
As Sergeant Alter and the two corporals hurried back to their sections, Erikson turned to address the company.
“Gentlemen,” he told them. “Today we will be united by our first battle. It will be frightening. It will be confusing. It will be bloody. But that is not your concern. Your only worry is to make sure that we hold our formation. If we do, we will come through this together. Are you with me?”
With their cries still echoing in the yard Erikson turned to Dolf, his skinny frame dwarfed by the drum he wore slung across his shoulder, and nodded. The drumbeat rolled out eagerly, and as he called out the order to march Erikson could hear in it the old hypnotic pulse that he had followed across countless battlefields over the years.
As he straightened his back and marched forwards it occurred to him that the drumbeat never really stopped. It was always there in the beating of the blood in his veins and the throbbing of the heart in his chest, an endless, irresistible call to march from one blood-soaked battlefield to the next.
Well, no more, he decided. This is my last war. After this I am retiring.
But even as he told himself this he could feel the energy that flooded through him and the anticipation of the savage joy to come, and he knew it to be the lie that it was.
High on the gatehouse walls Ganamedes watched as the vast, living beast of his baron’s army uncoiled itself and streamed out from the cramped confines of Hergig.
From this height it was possible to see the contrast between the barely controlled chaos which choked the streets of the city and the sharp-edged units which emerged from the gates to deploy into the wide open spaces below. Ganamedes, his eyes bloodshot after another night spent sweating with guilt, watched the army emerge and tried to find solace in the splendid geometries of its ranks.
As always, the first through the gate had been the knights. In this great beast of an army the knights were the claws, hard and sharp and brittle. They were born to their role, and they moved within their armour as easily as beetles within their shells. The steeds which bore them had been bred for battle too, and despite the weight of steel they carried the warhorses trotted along with an easy grace.
Ganamedes watched the green silk banner of the first regiment to emerge. The ghost of a smile passed across his face as he remembered the arguments there had been over precedence, and the baron’s impatience with his followers. Eventually he had ordered them to draw straws, and the great lords had done so as suspiciously as peasants squabbling over a windfall of apples.
By the time the knightly regiments had emerged, the old man’s smile had gone. He watched as they spread out, using the space the fields afforded them to deploy into wide ranks. It was the best way of using these great open spaces, as it would give as many of them as possible the room to use their lances. The mighty spears were tipped with ribbons of brightly coloured cloth which fluttered in the breeze, the decorations lending a festive air to their murderous purpose.
As the knights manoeuvred into position the state troopers were already marching out of the city. If the knights were the army’s claws, the troopers were its muscle, its hide and its sinew. What they lacked in individual killing power they made up for in sheer mass, and as they passed beneath him Ganamedes could feel the city’s stones vibrating beneath his feet as if in sympathy for its sons who now marched to war.
By the time the last of the state regiments had emerged the sun had risen, cresting the hills in the east and casting the shadow of the city walls far out into the plain beyond. It was a clear blue summer’s day, and the tips of countless spears and halberds glittered like a field of stars above men who were still in shadow. Ganamedes watched them and blessed the city founders who had ensured that dawn light would follow the defenders out of the main gate.
Not that he thought it would do them much good.
He knew too much.
He cast his eyes down and saw the regiments who were following the state troopers out. They were smaller, and their uniforms were little more than coloured rags tied around arms and heads. These were the militias. Some of them were almost as impressive as the regiments they would be attached to. A lot of the guilds had their own militias, like the smiths who he saw armed with hammers and covered with patchwork armour, and who practised their drill on feast days.
Then there were the other militias. The dregs and scrapings of Hergig and the lands beyond. They varied in size from a score to a hundred and they didn’t so much march as tag along behind the main army. Only one of them seemed of any use.
Ganamedes watched the hundred or so men of Erikson’s command as they marched behind the beat of their drum. Despite the ragged condition of their garb, and the bizarre collection of their weapons, they kept step with each other and had an almost military bearing.
And then, finally, came the artillery. They rattled along on sturdy carriages which were drawn by stocky little ponies. The gunners themselves clustered around the mighty weapons like chicks around the mother hen. Some walked, others rode the ponies and more sat atop the wagons that creaked beneath the weight of powder and shot.
Empty braziers and bundles of fuel swung from the sides of these wagons, and the mismatched vehicles and grizzled gunners made the artillery chain look more like a merchant’s caravan than the lethal engine of war that it was. Ganamedes wondered vaguely what part of this beast of an army the collection of cannon and mortars might be. Teeth, he decided. Or perhaps the roar.
The last of the wagons emerged from the city. A hurried order rang out and the gates swung closed. Ganamedes watched the squares and rectangles of men spread out across the plain. There was nothing to interfere with the calculated geometries of their formations in that wide open space and they were laid out just as neatly as plans on a tactician’s slate.
The sun cleared the city walls and set the army aglow. The blazing steel made Ganamedes’ bloodshot eyes water so much that the banners which fluttered above the army became so many multicoloured blurs. If only he hadn’t been cursed with the knowledge that had kept him awake for so many long and lonely nights. Then, perhaps, he might be able to believe in victory. As the first distant scouts sounded the alarm Ganamedes wiped his eyes and looked to the west.
Then he wiped his eyes again. Beneath the panicked swarms of birds that rose up before it, the dark, distant line of the forest seemed to be moving forwards. Ganamedes squinted at the advancing tide, and he heard a roar as if from some distant ocean.
The stone beneath his feet seemed suddenly less solid and the ranks of the army beyond seemed like no more than chaff before the wind.
The beasts had come.
“Drum the halt, Dolf,” Erikson told the youngster. He tried not to wince as the marching company stumbled to a ragged stop just beyond the city walls. A chorus of curses and complaints rang out as men were jostled or pushed back into place by their comrades, and their section leaders began to harangue them back into formation. Erikson pretended not to notice the confusion as a herald cantered up, pulled his horse around and sprang from the saddle.
“The Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig?” he asked, and cast a doubtful eye over the mismatched weapons that were waving around above the company’s heaving ranks.
“That is indeed our name,” Erikson said, raising his voice above Porter’s sudden stream of curses.
“Yes,” the herald said vaguely. He gazed at the company with horrified fascination before tearing his eyes away and delivering his message. “The baron commands you to move to a position equidistant between Jung’s Halberdiers and the Most Noble Company of Greatswords. If you would follow me I will act as your guide.”
“In the front line?” Erikson asked, suddenly glad of the commotion which was distracting most of the men from the conversation. “This is a militia regiment, not a phalanx. Are you sure we’re to go in the front line?”
The herald took another glance at the company and shrugged sympathetically.
“Those are your orders,” he said. “If you wish to be relieved of your position in the line…”
“No, of course not,” Erikson said hurriedly. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“Very well, if you would follow me then. Double step, if you can manage it.”
Erikson frowned. Forward of the line was a position for one of the great bastion regiments, a bristle of pikemen or the shield wall of a sword company. The only reason that a militia would be sent forwards would be if things were truly desperate.
He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and smiled as brightly as the rising sun.
“Dolf,” he commanded, looking down into the trusting eyes of his drummer. “Sound the advance.”
The drumbeat started again, and Sergeant Alter’s voice rang out above it, calling the right, left, right of the march. They had not had time to practise double time any more than they had had time to practise much else, but at least they could march with something approaching a military manner. Between them Erikson and Alter had taught the men that much.
Even so, as they passed through the neatly drawn ranks of the state regiments Erikson couldn’t help feeling something approaching embarrassment at the state of his ragged company. The feeling was heightened when they staggered to another halt between the halberdiers on one side and the greatswords on the other.
“Don’t they look fantastic, captain?” Dolf said, drumsticks idle in his hands as the ranks behind him gradually shoved and kicked themselves into a square. “I always wanted to be in a state regiment, ever since I can remember. One of the sisters told me that my father was a state trooper, although I never knew him.”
Erikson smiled at the wistful tone of his voice, and clapped him on the shoulder. The youngster looked up at him with such transparent hero-worship that it looked as if he wished he had a tail to wag.
“You never know.” Erikson winked at him. “Carry on the way you’re going and you could end up commanding one.”
Dolf looked sceptically at his captain then back to the block of greatswords who stood beside them. The men were barrel-chested and thick-armed from a lifetime of training, and they carried the great double-handed swords with an easy grace. Their armour was burnished by the sunlight, and the velvet and lace beneath the metal was of the very best quality.
One of the men, his beard large enough to have shamed a dwarf, caught his eye and called over.
“What are you doing with that war drum, lad? Somebody leave it in the rag and bone?”
Dolf’s mouth worked as he tried to think of a rejoinder. Before he could the rest of the company retaliated on his behalf. They jeered and swore, hurling ribald abuse at the greatswords with an effortless cohesion that was quite at odds with the rest of their manoeuvres.
Erikson smiled behind his hand as he cast his eyes up and down the line. It was neatly dressed, and from this angle it was impossible to see how many regiments stood shoulder to shoulder. He could see the lance tips of cavalry rising from behind a roll in the ground on the left side, but apart from that they seemed to be at the very front of the army.
But why? Why were they here?
It wasn’t until Porter started a chant regarding the greatswords’ female relatives that he realised why. They were the matting over the pit. The twig holding up the dead weight. The bait in the trap.
They were here to break.
Erikson thought of the regiments that lay on each side of them, and the regiments which they had passed on their way to their position. They were the best armed and most professional in the entire army. After the enemy had destroyed Erikson’s regiment and poured through the gap in the line, those regiments would surely close upon them like the jaws of a steel trap.
“Stupid bastard,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Why didn’t I see it sooner?”
By now the greatswords’ officers were calling them to order. Erikson waited until Porter got in the last word before signalling to Alter, who bullied the men into something resembling silence.
Erikson was no longer listening. He was too busy trying to think of a way out of the doom which the baron’s strategy required them to face. He was so deep in thought that it took him a while to realise that the entire line had fallen into a nervous silence, a thousand ears straining to catch the sound of the enemy’s advance.
When Erikson finally heard it the skin on his scalp crawled. It didn’t sound like an army. It sounded more like some force of nature. Even the sky darkened beneath a swarm of panicked birds it drove before it. That was more redolent of a storm front than an army.
“I can feel the ground shaking,” Dolf told him, and looked at the captain with eyes that had grown impossibly large within the pinched lines of his face.
“That’s normal,” Erikson lied with an easy aplomb. “Cavalry always does that.”
“I don’t think that it’s cavalry.” Dolf shook his head doubtfully. “Look.”
Erikson looked, squinting into the distance. Here and there copses of trees studded the open spaces of the fields, and the shadows they cast were long and dark beneath the rising sun. But now there was another shadow too, a line of darkness which rolled towards the humans’ line as remorselessly as a tsunami heading for a beach.
“They’re coming,” Sergeant Alter said with something that sounded strangely like anticipation. Already the musicians were starting to sound the alarm. Erikson, not to be outdone, slapped Dolf on the shoulder.
“Sound the stand-to, drummer,” Erikson said as, above the humans’ musicians the first of the enemies’ horns sounded. They rang out with toneless shrieks of discordant sound, and again Erikson felt his skin crawling and animal terror gnawing at its leash within his stomach. As always, he ignored it.
“Don’t know that one yet, captain,” Dolf said.
“Three short one long,” Erikson told him. My men can’t double time. My drummer can’t sound the stand-to. And my job is to provide a welcome mat for the enemy.
Fantastic.
He drew his sword, the steel feeling ridiculously light as his heart raced, and turned back to hammer home the message one more time.
“Remember, gentlemen,” he shouted above the drumbeat and the growing thunder of the enemy. “Hold your position and we will live. Break the formation and we will die. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, captain,” Gunter bellowed.
“Do you understand me?” Erikson asked again, and this time the whole company responded. Erikson nodded and turned back just as the first wave crested a hill which was no more than a quarter of a mile away.
In a hundred battlefields he had never seen anything like them before. The beasts which strained beneath crudely lashed-together harnesses were neither boar nor bull nor any other animal which he knew. As they thundered forwards, closing the distance with an impossible speed, Erikson studied the confusion of horns and tusks which sprouted from the creatures’ massive skulls. He could see their wickedly curved fangs too. They were bared impatiently as the charge rolled forwards.
Although no bigger than small ponies the beasts were obviously possessed of an immense strength. They were bound together by crude harnesses of leather and wood, and behind each pair a cart bounced and jolted along. The horrors which rode these contraptions, their bestial features even more vile for being melded with a humanoid form, clung to the woodwork with one hand while holding their axes ready with the other. The misshapen metal was dulled with rust and filth, but here and there sunlight caught a scrape of clean steel.
In the semaphore flash of these weapons Erikson could see that they were doomed. The beasts advanced in a wall that stretched as far as he could see in either direction, and the sheer, murderous weight of the bizarre chariots would be enough to crush them on its own. He had seen it happen before. You couldn’t stop a chariot. When they hit, they…
No.
No, stop that.
Erikson literally shook himself, and noticed that Dolf’s drum had fallen silent.
“Carry on drumming,” he said. “The stand-to continues until I give the order to stop.”
Dolf tore his eyes away from the advance and started drumming, tentatively at first but soon quickening to a solid beat.
The chariots were close enough that Erikson could see the turfs that were kicked up by their hooves. Then so close that he could see the spray of mucus that splattered around their nostrils. Then, when they were so close that he could see the vicious pink slits of their eyes, the thunder broke.
The sound of it echoed from both flanks, a deep boom of harnessed alchemy, and the effect was immediate.
The chariot which Erikson had been watching exploded. The riders disappeared as the vehicle burst asunder in a shrapnel storm of splinters and metal. The beasts that had been pulling it were pulled back and then thrown together by the shattered remains. One of them was already bleeding, its hindquarters a ruin of blood. Its fellow turned on it, animal panic finding escape in the feast of its dying kin.
Erikson stared stupidly as, with a solid beat that made his teeth rattle, a plume of soil and grey smoke rose in a sudden cloud directly ahead of him. It lifted another of the chariots as easily as a breath of wind will lift a dandelion seed. The mangled contraption flipped over in the air, beasts and riders hurled from its tumbling ruin.
Behind him, Erikson could hear the cheering of an entire army. It rang in his ears even as the acrid stink of blackpowder rolled lazily across the battlefield. Another cannon ball, blurring with the speed of Sigmar’s comet, scythed along the disintegrating line of the chariots. It sliced the legs from half a dozen of the beasts, which collapsed with squeals of pain.
One of the chariots, its yoke caught in the harness, flipped over, catapulting its riders ahead of it. A survivor rose to its feet, but only for a second. The advance still thundered forwards, and the beasts which pulled the following chariot gored the survivor as it thundered over the ruin.
The cheering faltered as, despite the rolling thunder of the artillery, the charge swept on. Now the beasts were so close that he could see the flies which swarmed around them. And now they had arrived.
Despite the eye-watering sting of blackpowder smoke, Erikson could smell the beasts as they barrelled into his company. It was the smell of rotten meat and foetid musk, and he would remember it for the rest of his life. At that moment he had no time to think of anything other than the ton of hoof and horn and steel that was smashing into his company.
It hit to the left of him, and although its momentum was hardly slowed by its impact with the screaming mass of its victims, it was slowed enough. Erikson ducked beneath the arc of one of the rider’s axes, ignored the agony of the spinning wheel that sheared the flesh off his right arm, and slashed through the fetlock of the nearest beast.
It turned on him, vicious pink eyes wide with pain, and Erikson sprang away from the slash of its tusks. Another man was not so quick. As the crippled beast lunged forwards it caught him in his stomach. It lifted its head and shook, gouging its tusk even deeper into the impaled man. Meanwhile one of the riders, a nightmare thing with a goat’s head and arms as thick as a man’s leg, was hacking down into the men who swarmed about him with the wide, easy strokes of a farmer clearing brushwood.
Blood splattered across Erikson’s face, but despite the carnage, and despite the shrieks of his dying comrades, he was joyous with relief. For all the damage it had done, the chariot had been stopped. Now the advantage was theirs.
The beast which he had hobbled was the first to be felled, its skull split by a single stroke from Brandt’s greatsword. Its fellow died soon after, blinded by spears and bled out by the hundred cuts that sliced open its arteries. The beast which had ridden the chariot leapt clear, but before it could run the company surged forwards, the men roaring with their thirst for vengeance.
It was Gunter who felled the beast. He waited until it had buried its axe in another man’s head before leaping forwards, robes flailing, and swinging his warhammer down in a blurred arc that ended up between the thing’s slit-pupilled eyes. It fell back in a daze, and a dozen mismatched weapons butchered it as easily as if it had been a trussed pig.
“Back into line!” Erikson cried, grabbing the men and pushing them back towards the square. “Ten paces back, and form up ranks. Ten paces!”
The men turned to him, their pale and blood-spattered features a study in confusion. There was no semblance of anything resembling a square anymore. Just a mob of milling individuals. Erikson felt something close to panic.
“Alter!” he cried. “Gunter. Porter. Re-form your sections ten paces back. Come on, re-form them.”
“Shall I drum the assembly, captain?” Dolf asked, and Erikson turned to him with the gratitude of a drowning man who has found a single solid timber.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, drum the assembly. Porter, where the hells are you? There you are. Leave that corpse and get your men back into their ranks. Gunter, leave the wounded for now. We will see to them when we’ve re-formed.”
Slowly, terrifyingly slowly, the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig re-formed into something resembling a square. If another chariot had hit them then they would have been finished, driven before it like a flock of chickens before a fox. But even as Erikson bullied his men back into their places he saw that the artillery had done its work. The charge had been broken.
All across the front the remains of the chariots lay scattered like flotsam on a beach after some terrible storm. Here and there beasts cried out in pain or limped and crawled away. An occasional shot still rang out, but now the rolling thunder of the cannonade had dwindled into the occasional ranging shot. Erikson watched a plume of smoke and shrapnel erupt from the ground perhaps a quarter of a mile away, well short of the mass of creatures which had spilled across the green horizon like some dark cancer.
“All accounted for, sir.”
Erikson took a deep breath and turned to find Sergeant Alter standing to attention. Perhaps it was the battle, but he looked twenty years younger than he had when Erikson had found him rotting in the gaol. Behind him the men had formed up into the beginnings of a square, and Porter and Gunter’s calls still rang out over their charges’ complaints.
“Casualties?” Erikson asked, although he could see the bodies that still lay tangled in the mud and amongst the traces of the chariot. Six men who would never eat or drink or dance again. Six men who would still be alive if they hadn’t followed him onto this battlefield.
“Just those six, sir,” Alter told him. “And a dozen more wounded.”
“Keep them in the centre,” Erikson told him, and looked again at the remains of the chariot.
Yes, he thought. Yes, that might do it.
It would be better than nothing, anyway.
“Then choose one section to go and find another one of those things,” he told Alter. “We’re going to build a barricade.”
“It was truly a magnificent sight, wasn’t it?” the seneschal asked. He had come to join Ganamedes on the battlements, and the two old men had watched the battle unfold below.
Ganamedes merely grunted. High on the walls his robes were flapping around his spindly arms as the breeze picked up. The rising sun warmed the back of his neck even as it shortened the shadows on the battlefield below. Perhaps it was the weather, but he was beginning to share the seneschal’s optimism.
He had seen the baron’s artillery at work before, of course. They practised their art on feast days with carefully doled-out rations of blackpowder. But to see them on the battlefield was quite different. There had been no miserly rations of blackpowder today. No single shots. Instead there had been the earthshaking thunder of a rolling cannonade. Even through the grey fog it had sent drifting through the perfect clarity of this summer’s day he could see the devastation it had wrought amongst the enemy.
“They barely reached our line before they were wiped out,” the seneschal continued, jabbering with the excitement of the battle that was unfolding below. “I knew we needn’t have been so worried. What can beasts do against our weapons? Wait until the rest of them come.”
“Yes,” Ganamedes said. “We are waiting. Ever heard of that happening in a battle with the beasts before?”
The seneschal shrugged.
“Perhaps they’ve been scared off.”
“They don’t look scared,” Ganamedes told him. “They’re not running away. They’re just waiting for us to come to them. Their charge has failed, and that is the only way left to deal with an enemy which outguns you.”
“But they’re only beasts,” the seneschal scoffed. “They don’t think like that.”
“And yet,” Ganamedes said vaguely and turned his full attention back to the massed ranks that waited just out of cannon range, “they wait.”
The seneschal fell silent and, as the sun rose ever higher, they waited and although the seneschal grew more uneasy, Ganamedes suddenly felt at peace. He had made his mind up. If the baron survived this day he would confess everything.
“What is that?” the herald asked. He was regarding the construction before Erikson’s company with the same amused interest as the regiments which stood on their flanks.
“Address the officer by his proper rank,” Sergeant Alter snarled at him.
The herald looked from the ragged sergeant to Erikson, who was regarding him with a dangerous calm. He cleared his throat and tried a different tack.
“The baron wants to know,” he said, “what that is. Captain.”
“Give the baron my compliments,” Erikson told him. “And inform him that it is a barricade.”
The herald looked again at the timber balustrade. It had been formed out of several ruined chariots. Although the splintered and bloodstained timber had been lashed crudely together it seemed secure beneath its own weight. Sharpened staves of wood thrust out from the front of it, the tips at eye height.
“Very ingenious,” the herald said. “Not sure that you haven’t wasted your labour, though.”
“Are you pulling us back?” Erikson asked, and cursed himself for sounding too eager.
“No.” The herald looked at him, and shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “No, quite the reverse. You are to stay here. The baron personally commands you to hold your ground until you are given permission to leave. The other regiments will be pulled back, but not you.”
Even as he spoke Erikson saw that the regiments on either side were turning and drawing back.
“But if we stay here,” Erikson asked, “who will guard our flanks?”
The herald shifted uncomfortably in his saddle.
“I’m sure the baron knows best,” he said, and the guilty expression on his face filled Erikson with even more fear than the sound of the regiments on either side of him marching back towards the city.
“Where the hell are they going?” Porter shouted, and the men burst into a chorus of their own questions. The herald’s horse shifted nervously beneath him and skittered back.
“Silence in the ranks!” Alter bellowed.
“Good luck,” the herald said and, with a salute, turned and cantered away after the retreating army.
“Stuff this,” Porter said, summing up their position with an elegant simplicity. “They’re leaving us out here as bait.”
“Or as an appetiser,” Minsk added, provoking a chorus of mutinous assent.
Erikson could feel the company breaking. It was something about the level at which the muttering was pitched and the way that the men immediately behind him had fallen silent. He examined the barricade. Now that the regiments on either side had disappeared it looked ridiculous, as useless as a child’s sandcastle against an incoming tide.
Still, at least it made a good podium.
“Gentlemen,” he cried, scrambling on top of it. “I can see that you are unhappy with our place in the battle line.”
The catcalls and laughter were quickly silenced as his eyes swept over them.
“I don’t like it either. I think that we are being used as bait.”
“Let’s leave then.” Minsk called out.
Erikson waited for the applause to die down before replying.
“If we run now,” he said, “it will be straight to the headsman’s block. Desertion in the face of the enemy is a capital offence.”
“Better a nice clean axe than those things,” somebody added.
“No,” Erikson snapped. “Better neither. We’ll wait. The enemy might not come. But if they do we will run.”
“Back to the headsman’s axe?” Gunter asked. Of all the men he seemed the only one not relieved by the prospect of retreat.
“I don’t think so,” Erikson shook his head. “Breaking before a charge is shameful, but it happens. Gentlemen, I know that this is an uncomfortable situation, but I ask you to trust me. After all, I have been a soldier all of my life, and I’m still alive.”
“What did happen to your last regiment?” Minsk asked. Erikson ignored him and hurriedly carried on.
“All I ask is that you wait for my signal before we withdraw. Will you do that?”
The men looked at one another.
“When you say withdraw,” Porter asked, “you do mean run?”
“As fast as you can.” Erikson grinned.
“Then of course we’ll follow you,” the little man said, and to relieved laughter Erikson leapt off his perch and turned back to face the enemy.
The glory of war, he thought, and bit down on a cynical smile.
* * *
Gulkroth could feel their frustration. It vibrated through the herd, greasing the air with the musk of aggression, and no wonder. The smell of blood was delicious on the breeze, and the maddening order of the enemy stood barely a charge away.
The beast lord was amazed that he’d been able to hold his army back this long. Such restraint went against every fibre of their being just as it went against every fibre of his. Yet still, held them he had, relying on the shamans that lurked behind the herd leaders to enforce his will.
“You are right to wait, lord,” Ruhrkar said. “Here is no place for us to do battle. The vile humans have made of this place a desert, and within it our herds have no defence against their alchemies.”
Gulkroth glanced down at the wizened shaman. Exposed to the unbroken light of the noonday sun it seemed incredible that he was still alive. The weak throb of his pulse was visible beneath the parchment skin his moulting fur revealed, and flies feasted on the yellow pus that seeped from his nostrils. Yet despite his frailty the shaman glowed with such power that he seemed almost a living herdstone.
“No, we will fight them in another place,” Ruhrkar continued, talking as if to himself. “We will draw them to us and feast upon them at our leisure. Fighting them here is as foolish as trying to suck the marrow from a still-living bone. First it has to be caught and smashed.”
Gulkroth watched the shaman drool, and wondered how much of his authority over the herd depended on this creature and his brother shamans. It made him uneasy and he turned back to watch the humans. They were withdrawing.
At least, most of them seemed to be withdrawing. They had left one of their herds out in the middle of the field. It was a miserable-looking mix of humans, and huddled behind their makeshift barricade they looked as tempting a morsel as a deer with a broken leg.
Gulkroth felt his resolve wavering when Ruhrkar spoke again.
“Look at the bait which the humans dangle before us,” he mused. “And look at the jaws that they would close on any who survived the thunder of their alchemy.” He gestured to where the state regiments, their army ablaze in the high sun, had taken positions within charge range of Erikson’s company. “What a snare that would be to put our heads into.”
Gulkroth growled with frustration and wished this day over. They would not come to him and he could not go to them. The torment of unsatiated bloodlust coursed through him so much that when the minotaurs broke lose he could hardly blame them.
They broke from the formation with a roar, a black avalanche of hate-fuelled muscle. Gulkroth caught a brief glimpse of the shaman that he had set to hold them crushed underfoot, bleeding even as he hit the ground, and the herds of gors on either side swayed as if caught in the minotaurs’ wake.
Gulkroth bellowed at them, venting his fury on those who dared to defy his order. They turned and cowered at his voice, hunkering down as the minotaurs charged off across the churned-up mud of the battlefield. A moan of yearning rose up from the herd at the sight, and that was when Gulkroth knew that without the shamans he would have lost them long ago.
“Here they come,” a voice cried out, and Erikson felt the company shifting behind him like wheat beneath strong wind.
“Hold your damned ground,” Sergeant Alter snarled.
“But he said that we could—”
“I said hold your ground,” Sergeant Alter said, turning on the man. “Wait for the captain’s order.”
Erikson peered over the top of the barricade and prepared to give the order to flee. Then he hesitated. This wasn’t the onslaught he had expected. The enemy still remained out of cannon shot, their obscene standards foresting the horizon even as they howled and moaned in some unholy chorus.
No more than a dozen shapes were galloping towards them. The creatures were as misshapen as the others, but whatever forces had twisted their forms had also given them an immense size. They stood taller than any two men, and their heads seemed to have been made in mockery of a bull’s. The horns they bore were stout, simple juts of bone, each as wide as a man’s outstretched arms, and as they ran great slabs of muscle moved beneath their thin fur.
But still. There were only a dozen of them.
As Erikson considered this, the first of the cannon roared out. The grey smear of its projectile flashed towards the creatures and the rest of the artillery opened up.
“Hold your ground, lads,” Erikson said. “The gunners will see to them.”
Cannon balls sliced through the ground, searing through the soil and sending up great divots of turf. Mortar bombs, their trajectories traced by goose-down trails of smoke, arced easily across the clear blue of the sky to land in volcanoes of smoke and debris.
By the time Erikson realised the gunners were not hitting the monsters they were already halfway to his regiment. Whereas the cannon had smashed through the densely packed mass of chariots, these bull-headed horrors were too nimble to be caught. They sped through the storm of iron, bounding through the gunners’ art with an effortless grace.
“Oh damn,” Erikson said as they closed in. It was too late to run now. If they did they would be caught in the open and…
Behind him, the men began to run. At first it was only a couple, but even as Erikson called to them the rest were going, the formation crumbling with a terrifying speed. He watched them, caught sight of Sergeant Alter’s uncertain face, and did the only thing he could do to stop the company from mutinying.
He joined them.
“Retreat!” he cried, signalling with his sword. “Retreat! Back to the lines.”
They needed no further encouragement, and the desertion became a stampede, each man trying to outdistance the next. Erikson snatched a last glance at the approaching horrors as they bellowed, venting their frustration as their prey fled. Then he turned to flee himself but before he could he saw the wounded that had been left by their comrades.
There were half a dozen who couldn’t join the flight. Some lay silent and bleeding. Others, crippled with shattered limbs and torn ligaments, were less fortunate. They were conscious of the fate that was upon them, and they cried out in their anger and their fear.
Even then he might have run, but before he could he saw that Dolf had dropped his drum and armed himself with an abandoned sword.
“Go on!” Erikson shouted at him. “Retreat! That’s an order.”
“Can’t leave our comrades for those things, captain,” the lad said with a simple certainty.
Erikson looked at him, then turned back to the slavering beasts that were bounding towards the barricade.
“No,” he decided, and it seemed that somebody else was speaking with his voice. “No, I suppose we can’t.”
He cast a last look towards the retreating rabble of his company then went to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Dolf. As he did so the first of the beasts vaulted the barricade, its obscene bulk blocking out the sky, and hurled itself towards them.
Sir Gerhardt Schleismann had spent his whole life training for war. He had been able to ride as soon as he had been able to walk, and he had started learning the basics of the lance and the sword soon after. He and his brothers had spent most of their days practising these arts, and they had grown as burly as any labourer with the constant use of steel.
When he had been old enough Schleismann had started riding in tournaments, and soon after that had come the proudest day of his life. He had been sworn into the Knights of the Silver Order.
And yet, despite the darkness of the forests that circled these lands like a wolf’s jaws around a lamb’s throat, he had never found true battle. He had arrived late, or been sent to the wrong flank. Even a gang of bandits which had made the mistake of attacking a caravan of which he was a part had escaped his blade, fleeing into the impenetrable undergrowth before he had slain any.
Now, at almost twenty years of age, he was beginning to wonder if he was the victim of some sort of terrible curse. It seemed that he was to spend his entire life in limbo, hovering like a hawk over a field without once being able to fold his wings and dive.
At first today’s battle had done little to dispel the superstition. Even in a field containing thousands of foul horrors from the woods beyond, it seemed that his sword was destined to remain dry, his lance unbroken.
So now, when he saw the minotaurs charging at Erikson’s lone company, he took it as a gift from Sigmar.
“Sound the advance,” he told his squadron’s bugler, his voice sharp with excitement. As the note rang out he touched the spurs to his horse’s flank and cantered forwards. Only when the rest of the squadron had matched his pace in a perfect razor’s edge of a line did he turn back to the bugler and, through a wide smile, order him to sound the charge.
The minotaur’s axe buried itself in the soil between Erikson and Dolf. The men sprang to either side as the creature prised its weapon back out of the sucking wound it had made in the earth.
Dolf stabbed wildly at the solid bulk of its ribcage, but although the blow was enthusiastic it lacked finesse. The steel bounced off hide and bone, and the beast’s roar was of outrage rather than pain. It spun towards the youngster, the stained steel of its axe a blur, but Dolf had already ducked and rolled backwards.
The creature raised its axe again, its muzzle peeled back in a snarl of murderous joy as it struck down, but Dolf twisted away. Although he had never handled a sword in his life, he had dodged a thousand blows, and it showed as he scuttled and raced around the creature’s assault.
Erikson, meanwhile, had been taking his time. While Dolf distracted the creature he had worked his way behind it, and although the urge to strike was strong he spent priceless seconds studying the roll of muscles across its back. He studied the thickness of the pelt and the width of its ribs. Only when he was sure did he strike. With a grunt of effort he slid the sword point between the back ribs, through a kidney and then into the liver.
The beast screamed with agony and leapt away Erikson’s sword, which had buried itself up to its hilt in the beast’s flesh, was torn from his hand. In the brightness of the rush of combat which pulsed through him he snatched a weapon from one of the wounded who lay sobbing to one side.
It was a butcher’s cleaver, heavy and unbalanced, but it was better than nothing. Floating on the balls of his feet Erikson watched as the stricken beast choked up a lungful of blood and staggered backwards, clawing ineffectually at the blade which still skewered it.
“Look behind you, captain,” Dolf cried out. Erikson turned, twisting away from the lunging spear thrust that would have pinned him as neatly as a butterfly on a pin. Although he was fast he lacked Dolf’s grace, and even as the crudely forged weapon sliced past him the ridge of black-furred bone which lay between the beast’s horns crashed into his skull.
There was a crack and he fell backwards. He saw a sparkle of galloping lightning with his last blink, but then there was nothing but darkness, painless and silent.
In the second before his charge connected with the monsters before them, Schleismann was numbed with a sensation that he was watching himself from some far distant place. He could still feel the beat of the horse’s heart between his legs, and the weight of the perfectly balanced lance in his mailed fist. He could even hear himself roaring a challenge, the cry echoing in the throats of his brother knights as they fell upon the beasts, but until the impact none of it seemed real.
It took the bone-jarring thud of his lance impacting into flesh to snap him out of the daze. As the lance snapped, splintering before the bones in his arm did, reality rushed back over him, and he was roaring with the terrifying joy of battle.
The creature he had hit staggered back, its horned head level with his horse’s as he turned it with his knees and unsheathed his sword. The steel hissed from the scabbard, and he stabbed down even as the beast lunged at him.
His blade pierced the column of its spine, slipping through the boulders of its vertebrae with the precision of a bull-fighter’s strike, but it was too late for his mount. Even as the beast died its horns were tearing through the flesh of his horse’s belly. It screamed and Schleismann, though he had known it since it had been a foal, leapt free without a single glance back. He had already identified his next target.
Its hide was as black as sin and its eyes were as red as hell itself. He barrelled towards it, closing the distance to deny it the advantage of reach. The thing swung a misshapen axe at him, but he angled his shield to deflect the blow and thrust upwards, cutting through dewlaps, through the throat, through the base of the skull and, with a final cry of effort, into the brain.
The beast fell back and Schleismann, who found that he was laughing with the joy of battle, kept his sword wedged in the shattered bone of his kill so that the pull of it propelled him forwards into the next target.
Around him his brother knights were plying their trade with the same joyous abandon. The creatures they faced were monstrous, and the power behind their blows was awesome, but they had neither art nor the weaponry of the men.
Still, the beasts knew how to kill. Armoured carcasses littered the churned-up ground as well as furred ones. The blood was as bright against their steel carapaces as the beasts’ blood was dark against their hides, and Schleismann felt a moment’s sobriety as he recognised one of the fallen.
But only a moment. His training left no room for hesitation, and he had already marked his next victim. It was larger even than its fellows, probably the bull of the herd, and it was flailing around at some ragged, scampering target. Schleismann leapt onto the remains of a barricade and saw that it was roaring with frustration as it tried to kill a boy. He was unarmed and barefoot, but still agile as he harried the monster. He danced between its blows as he hurled abuse at it, his red hair flashing in the sunlight.
If the spectacle had been within a fighting pit Schleismann would have enjoyed watching it. But here and now his instincts had him moving already, shield first and sword held back like a scorpion’s sting. The beast heard the clatter of his approach, spun around with a terrifying speed and angled an axe stroke towards him.
This time Schleismann didn’t angle his shield neatly enough, and the bound leather and hide of its construction shattered as the crudely forged blade bit through steel and into his shoulder and knocked him to his knees.
He ignored the pain and staggered back to his feet, lunging in through the beast’s guard to deliver a killing blow. Before he could the creature lunged down, moving with such a speed that the spread of its horns blocked Schleismann’s vision. He turned but the blow caught him on the helmet. He collapsed backwards, stars exploding beneath his dented steel visor as he fell heavily.
Numbed fingers fumbled for his sword as he blinked to clear his vision. When the world came back into focus he saw that his death was upon them. Disdaining weapons, the monster clutched him by his arms and lifted him towards its stinking maw. Schleismann’s stomach rolled with nausea as he inhaled the rotten meat stink of the creature’s breath and saw the chipped blades of its teeth.
Before it could bite it screamed, a surprisingly high-pitched shriek of agony, and dropped the knight back down to the grass. Schleismann saw two things. The first was the hideous wound in the monster’s groin, and the second was the youth retreating from his handiwork, his knife as red as his hair with fresh blood.
Then Schleismann saw his sword. He grasped the hilt and struck up, a lifetime of training sending the steel into a cluster of nerves and arteries inside the creature’s leg.
It bellowed as it fell, arterial blood fountaining into the air, and Schleismann scrabbled away from its death throes. He caught a glimpse of the youth dragging an unconscious man away, then wheeled around to see how the battle was going.
It was over. Even as he watched the last of the monstrous creatures was being butchered from all sides, its doom as certain as that of a lame bull surrounded by a pack of wolves. And beyond, the rest of the enemy army still waited, unmoving.
Schleismann gingerly removed his ruined helmet and used the plume to wipe the blood from his face. Then he heard the drumming.
He turned to see the youth, the man he had saved lying at his feet, his knife sheathed, and a battered old drum slung over his shoulder. Although he was pale and wide-eyed his narrow jaw was set with a grim determination, and Schleismann looked past him to the gaggle of ragged men who had fled long, long minutes ago.
They had been stopped by the steel thicket of pole arms and shields that marked the baron’s army’s vanguard. From this distance it was impossible to see if the routed men were rioting or re-forming. Not that it would make much difference to their usefulness, Schleismann thought with a cheerful contempt.
In any case, he thought, regarding the drummer with a cold appraisal, this lad was too good for the rabble he was with. He made a mental note to find him after the battle, then went to reorganise the survivors of his squadron.
* * *
“Come on, get back into line,” Alter said. Although oblivious to Schleismann’s cold appraisal his neck was burning with shame after the other regiments had witnessed the company’s disgraceful flight.
“Do as the sergeant says,” Gunter boomed, and looked eagerly back to where Dolf was dragging Erikson away from the slaughtered minotaurs.
“Come along, ladies,” Porter added. “You heard the man. Back into… Minsk, where the hell are you going?”
“I’m…”
Porter looked at Brandt, who clapped a friendly paw on Minsk’s shoulder and pushed him back into the mass of his fellows.
“You heard the corporal,” he said.
The regiments who stood behind them had been watching the skirmish between the knights and the minotaurs, but now their attention was back with the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig as it slowly drew back together. The suggestions came thick and fast, although for once even Porter was too preoccupied to return the favour.
“Listen to the drummer,” Alter bellowed at them. He exchanged a glance with Gunter who briefly appeared amongst the mass of men. The warrior priest nodded so Alter, whose own section was in something approaching order, decided to take the risk.
“Forward march,” he called, gesturing with his sword.
The officers took up the call. For a moment it seemed that the company would collapse into further mutiny but gradually, under the threats of their officers and encouraged by the fact that a company of knights now lay between them and the enemy, the company did march. The formation even started to march in time as Alter bellowed out the left, right, left in time to Dolf’s drumbeat.
When the shape of Erikson staggered back to his feet in front of them, waving his battered cap full of broken feathers, they even had the cheek to cheer.
And so the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig skulked back towards their victory. As they assembled around their captain, their drummer and their wounded, the army of beasts who still lined the horizon turned and left, fading from their positions as quickly as a nightmare fades upon waking.
This time the whole army cheered. Only Erikson remained aloof. Despite the pain that still held his skull in a vice-like grip, he was already calculating how best to turn the day’s events to the company’s advantage.