Chapter Sixteen

 

 

Even Gulkroth was impressed by the number that had gathered within his dominion. They had come from every dark glade and low canyon and hidden fastness in Hochland, and now that he saw them arrayed before him they seemed more swarm than herd. Individuals were indistinguishable in the seething masses that heaved beneath the putrid luminescence of the Chaos Moon’s fattened sphere, and the reek of them greased the air for miles around.

There would certainly be no way for such a throng to find food here. They had already scoured the land for every morsel and that, Gulkroth considered, was a great advantage. He wanted them hungry. No, he wanted them ravenous. He wanted the smell of the man-flesh within the city walls before them to drive them mad with desire.

He watched the walls from the perch he had taken on a great chariot. When he stood upon it he towered above all but the minotaurs, and he could see the defiant lines of the city walls rising above them. Here and there tiny figures of men could be seen scurrying past gaps in the battlements. He fancied that he could smell their terror even through the stink of his host.

When he had arrived at this place his first instinct had been to charge the gates, throwing wave after wave of axe-wielding beasts against it until it had been destroyed. Either that or until the pile of their bodies had formed a rampart.

But then, as a steady stream of scouts brought him tidings of the land beyond, he had reconsidered. The humans’ main force was still strong, and he would need the herd intact to destroy it when it arrived. In particular he wanted to be sure of capturing their lord. The shamans had plans for him. Glorious, terrible plans.

And so, instead of the purity of animal aggression, Gulkroth was making preparations. Even now, with the Chaos Moon wallowing back towards the horizon, the forest behind him was alive with the sound of chopping. Thousands of his followers worked there, their war axes covered in sap instead of blood as they built a forest of siege ladders.

It was a blasphemy, Gulkroth knew, but a necessary one. The shamans had assured him that they would make recompense, but it still made him uncomfortable. The humans would pay in full for forcing him to do this, of that he was sure. He had already sent herds out around the walls to make sure that none escaped his wrath.

He was brooding on such thoughts when instinct suddenly made him look up.

At first there was nothing to see against the glow of the night sky, but soon he saw scraps of movement in the distance and felt the aura of the newcomers. He bared his fangs in pleasure as he understood what the creatures were, and bellowed a greeting into the sky.

His bodyguard cringed at the sound of their lord’s voice but the winged creatures fluttered obediently towards him. They landed in before him, thudding down to earth in shadowed tangles of featherless wings and scrawny limbs. Although they had the wings of bats and the talons of raptors they had the bodies of women. Moonlight flowed across the smooth contours of their torsos, revealing them to be as lithe and ripe-breasted as any courtesan. Their faces might almost have been human too if it had not been for the bestial expressions they wore and the long, dagger-sharp fangs they sported.

“Welcome,” Gulkroth said, and they trembled with delicious terror at the chasm-deep timbre of his voice. “From where do you come?”

“Your messenger found us in the cliffs above the forest, great lord,” one them said, its voice a shrill caw. “He bade us come for a great slaughter and so here we are.”

“You will feast before the Chaos Moon wanes,” Gulkroth told them. “But first you will help to prepare the flesh. You will be my voice in the battle to come.”

So saying, he turned and strode through the herd that had gathered around him. It parted before him like a shoal of herring before a shark. His new servants glanced about them nervously as they hopped and scuttled along behind him, their wings folded along their backs. They tried not to look at the beasts which towered above them on all sides. Tried not to notice the hunger and the resentment that glimmered in the dark sockets of their eyes.

“Shamans,” Gulkroth called as he climbed to the top of a fire-blasted hilltop. A coven of the beasts bowed low as he advanced upon them, and the most ancient of them stepped forwards.

“My lord,” Ruhrkar said, his rheumy eyes aglow with the power of the moon above. In its fell light the withered creature had grown in power, his sorcery blossoming like some terrible fruit.

“Ruhrkar, in the morrow, as we close our claws around the humans, these beasts will carry my voice. Give them the gift to do so.”

“Yes, my lord,” the shaman said, slouching forwards to touch the throats of the cowering harpies. He was already thinking of the potion he would prepare for them so that they might truly carry the voice of their lord.

“And do it quickly,” Gulkroth rumbled. “We attack tomorrow, when the Chaos Moon is ascendant in the sky.”

He hadn’t meant it as a rallying call, but such was the power of his will that the promise sent a shiver of bloodthirsty joy though those around him. Heads thrown back, they raised their voices in an expanding storm of sound that spread throughout the entire herd.

In the midst of the herd Barwedel’s walls shook, and so did the men who cowered terrified behind them.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t worry,” Erikson said. “It’s a simple enough job. All we have to do is knock down a bridge.”

How easy that seems here, he thought, stood almost in the shadow of Hergig’s mighty walls and with the rest of the baron’s army quartered around us. But how difficult it will be when we try to turn the ambition into a reality.

No wonder the provost marshal had been sympathetic as he’d explained the mission just hours before.

Alter, Gunter and Porter stood around him, leaning over the makeshift map table that stood in the midst of their camp and examining the parchment critically. Behind them the company, as yet blithely unaware of their next mission, talked and laughed and argued as they sharpened weapons and mended clothes. Their spirits had been high ever since they had cornered Porter and persuaded him that a cancellation did not involve the forfeiture of all bets cast.

As for Porter, if he had been miserable then, he was horrified now.

“I thought you said that Barwedel was under siege,” he said.

“Precisely. That’s why we have to cut off the enemy’s escape before the battle.”

“But Barwedel,” Porter said, punching the map with a cartographer’s zeal, “is only an inch away from that bridge.”

“An inch!” Erikson scoffed. “It’s at least three miles.”

“I can smell the damned things three miles away,” Porter complained. “And who else will be there if the enemy do happen to turn up?”

“Nobody,” Erikson said. “The rest of the army will be on the other side of Barwedel, right here.”

“An excellent distraction,” Alter said.

“Distraction?” Porter yelped so loudly that some of the men looked over.

“Yes,” Alter said mildly. “A distraction. War’s never a safe business, but the baron knows what he’s doing.”

“And what about when the beasts do turn and run?” Porter hissed. “What will they do when they’ve swum across the river and found us?”

“The plan is not for the river to stop them completely, but just to slow them down,” Erikson said. “That should give the army enough time to chase them down and finish them off completely.”

“That’s the plan, is it?” Porter asked sourly. “To kill every single one of the enemy before they manage to swim across a couple of dozen yards of water?”

“You’ve got it,” Erikson beamed, and slapped the quartermaster on the back. “Of course, we’ll need mounts and supplies to make sure we can take the bridge down in time. Here, take a dozen men to the palace and present this chit. They’ll give you whatever we need.”

Porter hesitated, torn between greed and caution.

“Well, as long as we don’t have to hang about after the bridge is down,” he said, and took the chit.

“We’ll play it by ear,” Erikson promised him. “What about you, Gunter? Any thoughts?”

“As long as we are dying deaths worthy of Sigmar’s sons, I have no preference for the location.” He shrugged with a sublime indifference. “This place will be as good as any.”

The three other men looked at him, aghast.

From below a sudden chorus of trumpets caught their attention and the three men, happy to be distracted from Gunter’s morbid enthusiasm, turned and looked towards the city gates. A line of guards had beaten a path from the city and now the baron was emerging at the head of his personal guard. Even at this distance, perhaps half a mile away, Erikson could see the splendour of the baron’s gold-chased armour. The steel and gilding had been polished to a diamond sparkle, and the white fox-fur cape that the baron wore fastened to his shoulders gleamed in the sunlight.

Behind him, walking their horses forwards in a perfect column of six, the harnesses of the baron’s guard were only slightly less splendid. Then, as the column emerged from the gate, the baron’s personal standard bearer raised his banner and the great flag of Hochland unfurled in the warm summer air.

As the red, white and green was lifted in the breeze the assembled soldiers began to cheer the baron, their voices high with excitement as he and his entourage trotted through the army. He stood up in his stirrups, unsheathed his sword and held it aloft, an icon of steel and light to go with that of cloth.

Erikson found that he was cheering along with the rest of them. The voices of the entire army echoed off the walls of the city, only dying down when the baron had passed through the army and the rest of the regiments started wheeling into line to follow his lead. Soon the whole camp was moving, a massive caravan of marching men, walking horses and the pack beasts and wagons of the train.

“Come on, Porter,” Erikson said. “I’ll come with you. If we don’t destroy that bridge in time, then…”

“What?” Porter asked as Erikson trailed off.

“Never mind,” Erikson said, and bit back the unfamiliar feeling of guilt. “Let’s just do it.”

 

Watching the company trying to ride reminded Erikson of the first time they had tried to stand in rank and file.

A few of them rode if not well, then at least safely. Dolf was a natural. Although he had never ridden before in his life it took him only a couple of hours before he was sitting so comfortably in the saddle that he could even tap out a rhythm on the drum.

Others fared less well. They hung onto the backs of their trotting ponies, clutching at the reins like drowning men clutching at straws. Some abandoned the reins altogether and clutched onto their ponies’ necks, while others rode leaning sideways over the saddle like so many sacks of turnips. A few had abandoned any attempt at riding and were running alongside their mounts instead.

At any other time Erikson might have regarded these efforts with patient amusement, but not now. He and the provost marshal had plotted their course on the map, and although Erikson’s company had no more of a distance to cover than the main force, they had a heavy workload to get through when they got there. Nobody was quite sure what the bridge was built from, but it had stood for centuries. That was why, as well as taking enough ponies for his men, he had also received a dozen weighed down with tools and rope and tackle.

“Do you think it might be time to give the men a rest, sir?” Alter asked.

Erikson’s surprise turned to enlightenment as he saw the way his sergeant sat in the saddle. He was gripping the reins so tightly that he looked as if he was trying to throttle them, and his legs were locked so tightly around his pony’s midriff that he might have been trying to ride a greased pig.

“No, no rest yet,” Erikson told him. “We ride until nightfall, and start again at dawn. I want to reach the damned bridge by afternoon tomorrow.”

“Right you are, sir,” Alter said miserably, and clenched his jaw as his horse skipped over a pothole.

“Fancy a race, sergeant?” Porter asked as he trotted up beside them. He was as easy in the saddle as a monkey on the branch of a tree and he was thoroughly enjoying the discomfiture of his comrades.

“Why aren’t you back with the supplies?” Alter snapped, then wobbled dangerously.

“I wanted to report that the damned shirker Hofstadter seems to have slipped off,” he replied. “Thought the captain might want to know.”

“It’s a shame,” Erikson said, loud enough for the men behind him to hear. “He’ll hang for it when they catch him.”

“That’s all very well,” Porter said. “But my point is that I’ll need to keep one of these ponies to replace him. He was a surly dog, but he had strong shoulders.”

“Never mind that now,” Erikson told him. “Just get back and make sure that all the gear is tied on tight. See that forest up ahead? If we’re ambushed, we won’t be stopping.”

He pointed to where the wheat fields petered out into rough pasture before being swallowed up completely by the forest.

“Right you are, captain,” Porter said and, with a worried glance at the tree line, rode back to secure his stores.

 

That night they camped in a wide clearing in the wood. Despite their stiff muscles and aching joints, most of the company slept soundly, snoring like hogs in the sickly moonlight.

Not so Erikson. He stalked around the sentries restlessly, his eyes peering into the dark fastness of the forest around them. It was strangely silent, and apart from the distant calls of an owl he heard no sign of life. Only once did he imagine that he could hear a distant rumble in the east, but if he did it was too distant and too vague for him to interpret.

Dolf, it seemed, also had trouble sleeping. After checking that the sentries had been changed, Erikson saw him sitting up in his blankets, gazing wide-eyed at Morrslieb.

“Try not to look at it,” he said sotto voce, and knelt down beside the lad. “They say it brings bad luck.”

Dolf looked at the captain, then back up at the moon.

“Alter says we make our own luck, captain,” he said. “Although Gunter says there is no such thing as luck, just the will of Sigmar.”

“Gunter’s a serious man,” Erikson said, and found his own gaze drawn upwards. Morrslieb loomed overhead, and for a split second Erikson felt a sense of vertigo as though he were falling towards it. He glanced away and saw how the trees clawed up towards the Chaos Moon like worshippers before some dark altar.

It was impossible to make out any features on its surface. There were just swirling patterns, a smudged kaleidoscope of dots that might have been created by his own tired eyes.

“Sometimes I think I can see my parents’ faces in it,” Dolf said, and although he tried to keep his tone level there was a terrible anxiety underlying it.

“No,” Erikson told him, tearing his own gaze away. “You can’t. It is a thing of ill omen, and all it shows are lies. No, stop looking at it and go to sleep. That’s an order.”

“Yes, captain,” Dolf said, and rolled over in his blankets.

“Sleep well.” Erikson slapped him on the shoulder, then prowled back out to see how the sentries were doing. And all the while he could feel Morrslieb gazing down at him, its baleful gaze making his skin crawl.

 

The company awoke at dawn, ate a hasty meal of cold gruel then climbed back into the saddle. Despite their groans of agony Erikson pushed them hard, and by midday they had emerged from the forest onto the ridge that overlooked their target.

The river had cut through the pasture land about half a mile away, and the bridge stood solidly across it. A timber frame stood on granite arches, the width generous enough for the fattest of haywains.

When Erikson saw it he swore long and loud.

“Don’t worry, captain,” Alter said. With the end of his cavalry days in sight, he had become a happy man. “It’s no more than we expected, and once we take the timber down we can tumble the blocks easily enough.”

“It’s not that,” Erikson said. “It’s the river. Look at it.”

The men looked. The banks were covered with dry husks of reeds, brown and withered with the heat of the summer. Between the banks the company could also see what had once been the river bed. It was a hardpan of dried and cracked mud. The same breeze that rustled through the dead stalks of reeds blew dust devils along it, pale puffs of dried earth that dusted the yellowed pasture land around it.

“But this is good news, isn’t it, captain?” Dolf asked. “We’ll be able to get down to the very foundations of the bridge.”

“Not much point now, lad,” Alter told him. “Without the river, what’s the point of destroying the bridge in the first place? The enemy will just walk across.”

Erikson pursed his lips and thought about the pardon that he had claimed to have already won for the company. The pardon that was, as yet, unsigned.

“First things first,” he said. “We follow orders. If the provost marshal wants us to destroy the bridge, then so be it.”

“Seems a bit pointless,” Alter said.

“Ignoring a superior’s pointless orders?” Erikson winked at him. “You’ve been with this bunch of reprobates for too long.”

With that he ended the discussion by spurring his horse forwards. The company reached the bridge a few moments later and, without giving anybody the chance to wonder why they were bothering, Erikson set about organising their efforts.

It was a solid enough piece of construction. Solid enough to have outlasted the river it spanned, anyway. That didn’t deter Erikson.

He first set the men to hacking apart the wooden superstructure that carried the road over the muddy trickle that had once been a river. They set about it with axes and cutlasses, a whirlwind of cheerful destruction, and soon the dry river bed was full of the splintered remains of the upper structure.

Then, as one team lashed the timber together into a crude A-frame, another started to loop the heavy rope they had brought around the stone supports. When the frame had been lifted they ran the rope through a block and tackle, tied the ponies into a single, crudely lashed harness, and pulled.

At first it seemed that muscle wouldn’t be enough to move the ancient granite blocks but, as the men threw their weight into the effort, the stones reluctantly began to move. They groaned as if in agony, and as the sweat of men and horses flowed and mingled the granite slowly shifted.

When it happened it did so with a crash that made the earth jump. The capstone fell, the only stone to break loose for a second, then the entire bridge collapsed. A great cloud of dust enveloped the men, and the horses tore loose and fled in panic.

“That’s it, then,” Alter said, coughing as he emerged from the dust to stand beside Erikson. “That is one thoroughly destroyed crossing point.”

“Oh, that’s not it,” Erikson said, his eyes peering through the settling debris to the west. “That’s only the beginning.”

Alter followed his captain’s gaze over the dried-out twist of the river. The pasture rolled on for another mile or so before being swallowed back up by the eternal forest.

“Listen,” Erikson said, his voice barely audible above the excited voices of the men and the whinnying of the ponies. Alter listened and as he did so he realised that he could hear other voices and other beasts. Their cries were muted with distance and the intervening forest, but there was no mistaking the ferocity in them. Or the terror.

“We’re going to finish the job, Alter,” Erikson said, his eyes serpent-green. “Remember Nalderstein? What we can’t achieve with water, we’ll achieve with fire instead.”

“Yes, sir.” Alter nodded approvingly. “We set fire to the forest and let that block the enemy’s escape.”

“Theirs and ours both,” Erikson grinned like a wolf. “Before we burn it, we’re going through. We will play our part in the battle, Alter. We will play our part. We will play it to Provost Marshal Steckler’s unquestionably and undeniably full satisfaction.”

And if they ever find out why we have to, Erikson thought, they’ll string me up.

His grin grew even wider as he turned to give the men their orders.