Forged in Battle (17 page)

At times Gaston was barely able to keep his eyes open as he
dipped the quill into the ink and scratched it across the page.

Each company’s name was listed, with the name of their
captain and the number of men they led.

The Crooked Dwarf Volunteers. Guthrie Black. Thirty-four
brave men.

The Guild of Blacksmith’s Hammerers. Strong-arm Benjamin.
Twenty brave souls.

The Old Unbreakables. Blik Short (retired marshal). Fifteen
former soldiers. Each man bears his old armour and equipment.

Squire Becker’s Helmstrumburg Guard. Squire Becker. Shields
and spears. Twenty men (not including Squire Becker).

As evening began to fall, Sigmund thanked all the remaining
men and sent them away.

“Get some sleep, men!” he told them. “If anything happens
then we will notify you!”

The men left reluctantly, heading either to their homes or
rented rooms, or went to the bars and shared a stein or two, while they laughed
about how they would send the beastmen back to their forests.

When all the volunteers had left, Sigmund let out a long
sigh. He had not slept for two days, and the frenetic activity of the day had
left him utterly exhausted.

He lay back on his bed, and put his feet up. He should go and
see his mother, he thought. He shut his eyes, thinking that he would just rest
them for five minutes—but he fell deeply asleep.

* * *

As Morrslieb rose, the guards looked out from the walls, and
wondered how long until the beastmen swept down from the forests.

And then in the darkness a fire appeared—and another!

Soon a circle of fire was burning. A ring of torches that
encircled the Jorg family mill.

The sun set through the haze of smoke like a ruddy ball of
blood.

Andres let the dogs out for the night, then he shut the house
door and sat down. The remaining four mill-hands watched as he poured himself a
cup of kirsch and began to recount stories of past battles.

The first battle he fought was against the Count of Ostland.
The Talabec army was outnumbered two to one, and they had lined up on the upper
slopes of a broad hill: infantry in the centre and cavalry on the wings. He told
how the Ostlanders had crossed the ford and lined up with the river at their
backs. They’d looked garish and extravagantly dressed in their fine uniforms and
feathers. They were so close that he could make out the gilt touches on the
armour of the Ostland pistoliers who had pushed up to test the Talabecland right
wing.

For a number of hours the armies traded cannon and musket
shot. The Ostland cavalry swept the Talabec right from the field and then the
Ostland infantry had struck up their marching tunes and advanced.

His memories were blurred from then. While the Ostland
cavalry was looting their baggage train, the Talabec cavalry had broken the
Ostland right and fallen upon the Ostland rear, which had panicked and fled. It
seemed like half an hour had gone by—but when the battle ended the sun was
setting and hours must have passed. How they had drunk that night!

He told them of another time when he had faced a rabble of
revolting peasants from south-west Talabecland. They had formed themselves into
a mock army: shoe lasts or buckets atop their banner poles. They gave themselves
grand titles such as the Grand Army of Rustic Unity or the Brothers of Branbeck.
They had hired the help of Tilean mercenaries and the Tilean pikemen were the
only ones who put up a fight. They repulsed three attacks from the halberdiers
and handgunner columns before the greatswords were sent in. Andres looked up at
his zweihänder and laughed as he remembered how they had cut through the thicket
of pike shafts and then closed in on the startled Tileans and set to in a
ferocious hand to hand struggle. The Tileans fought well, but they were
surrounded and beaten and after an hour their leader limped out from their lines
to surrender.

Andres spat. The fleeing peasants had looted the mercenaries’
camp during the fighting and the next day the Tileans joined in the hunt. They
hung hundreds of rebels, he remembered. Taught those men a lesson they would
never forget.

As the night went on and Andres drank more his memories
turned maudlin. As common as the victories were battles that neither side won
outright. The time his best friend, fellow Helmstrumburger, Johann Kilmar, was
killed. The last story was the one in which he lost the lower half of his leg:
not to an enemy’s sword, but to the surgeon’s knife and saw. There had been
nothing to still the pain as the surgeon made a neat cut through the flesh, and
then took his saw to the living bone. Not even a drop of kirsch, Andres thought
with a sigh and poured himself another cup.

The men listened silently. Andres realised how young and
naive they were. Soldiering aged a man quickly, if he lived.

“Now, bed!” Andres said and the men lay down on the makeshift
beds of sacks and old rugs from the mill. “Sleep well! I’ll keep watch tonight.”

The men shuffled until they were comfortable, then went to
sleep. Andres sipped his cup slowly. Outside the wind had picked up and the
drafts made the candle flames flicker back and forth.

Every once in a while one of the mill-hands turned in his
sleep. Andres finished his cup. He took the bottle tipped it up again, the last
drops dribbled out into the cup.

His supply of Averland kirsch was out in the woodshed. He
pushed himself up, unbolted the door and braced himself to the outside chill.
There were packs of clouds racing over the sky. He turned towards the hills, to
see if there were any more fires. If there were, they were hidden by the
landscape, but he thought he saw a torch a little down the hill, through a patch
of trees.

Andres stumped down the slope towards the mill to get a
better view. It looked like a bonfire. There was another fire to the east just a
hundred yards away.

One of the dogs started barking frantically.

Just the breeze he told himself, but he shivered, stopped and
looked over his shoulder. There was something on the slope by the river. The
barking stopped in a whimper, then there was the sound of flesh being hacked.
Andres called out the dog’s name but there was no answer. A figure crossed in
front of one of the fires.

Andres saw another figure pass in front of the fire and
recognised the silhouette: it was a beastman!

Andres rushed back up the slope. He could hear the panting
breaths of his pursuers as they gained on him. The doorway seemed impossibly far
away—but he reached it just ahead of them and slammed the door shut and threw
the bolts.

“Up men! Up!” Andres roared.

A body crashed against the door. And another. The mill-hands
scrambled from their make-shift beds and reached for weapons: a club, a kitchen
knife, two of them grabbed pitchforks as Andres yanked his greatsword from the
mantelpiece. One of the shutters on the other side of the room exploded in
splinters of wood. A horned head thrust through the hole, and the creature
roared.

The beastman started to drag itself through the smashed
shutters. The mill-hands panicked.

“Fight, lads!” Andres bellowed. He pointed towards the rack
of kitchen knives and the men with pitchforks scrambled to arm themselves with
something less cumbersome.

Andres brought his sword down onto the beastman and cut it
clean in half, the upper body falling in through the window with a great gout of
gore.

For a few minutes there was a terrible stand-off. Any
beastmen that tried to clamber inside were dealt with savage ruthlessness—but
there was no way Andres and his men could escape.

From the sounds on the kitchen roof, it seemed that a number
of beastmen climbed up there and were beginning to smash and tear away the
tiles. At the same time it sounded as if they had found something to ram the
door. The planks began to shudder and crack as holes began to appear in the
kitchen roof. Andres smelled smoke, and the brief glimmer of hope that they
could hold out was gone. This was a trap from which he would never escape. They
would all burn.

A fell bravery came over Andres. He would soon be in the
Halls of Morr, and he would see his long-dead brothers again: and with him he
would take a heap of beastmen heads.

A beastman dropped through the rain of the kitchen roof. It
bellowed as it fell onto the floor, but Andres caught it with an upper-cut in
the ribs, and the power of his blade tore through the ribs, and splattered the
wall with shreds of lung and blood.

A second beastman hesitated to follow the fate of the first,
and Andres threw back the bolts on the doorway. “Come and meet me!” he bellowed
and three beastmen charged inside as another dropped onto the kitchen table.
They would all die together.

When night fell, Baltzer and Osric slipped out of the
barracks and made their way along the eastern wall, looking for the hut that had
been described to them. Osric had a lantern in his hand, but it was hooded so as
to allow them to move stealthily.

“What did that note say?” Osric hissed and Baltzer repeated
it verbatim.

“A ramshackle shack. Within which you will find something of
great value for Helmstrumburg.”

Osric nodded and they made their way along the wall. The
round water tower, which marked the spot where wall and river met, loomed over
them. They could see a couple of spearmen sentries in the tower, but they were
looking out of town.

The two men crept forward and in the crook of the shed, where
a large crack in the base of the water tower had begun to inch its way up the
tower, there indeed was the “ramshackle shack.”

A rat skittered by and Osric jumped. “I hate those things,”
he hissed, but he could see Baltzer laughing and pointed at the door. “Right—you open that thing!”

Baltzer felt for a lock, but there was none. He pulled the
doors open and there was a familiar smell that made him smile.

“Blackpowder!” he grinned and Osric stepped forward to see
for himself.

Four firkins of blackpowder. From his time as officer of the
watch, Osric knew all the smugglers in town. Knew who would be looking to shift
something as valuable as blackpowder. Just one of these beauties would make them
a handsome profit. All they had to do was to get through this chaos alive!

* * *

Sigmund dreamed he was in a room full of flames and screaming
voices. The sounds of running footsteps startled him from his sleep and he sat
up in his bed. His lamp was still burning, but the flame was weak and the oil
was almost out. He realised he must have fallen asleep without meaning to, and
hadn’t turned it out. He shook his head to clear his head.

He felt a terrible sense of imminent danger. He stood up and
threw back his door. There was a wind blowing and someone was running past.

“Ho there!” Sigmund shouted.

The man stopped.

“What news?”

“Sir! There are fires just outside town.”

“Which way?”

“To the east,” the man said. “Along the Kemperbad Road.”

“How far?”

“About three miles.”

Three miles would set it at his family’s mill. Sigmund had
forgotten his father. Damn! Something told him that the dream and the fires were
connected. He ran to the room where the sergeants slept, but there was no time
to raise his men. He considered taking a boat, but there was no way to go
upstream. He had to do something—but there was no way he could explain this to
his sergeants. The fires and the stones and the knowledge of his ancestry were
somehow linked, of that he was sure.

Sigmund paused for a moment then turned and sprinted to the
stables. There were a couple of old horses kept here for pulling the barrack’s
supply carts. He dragged an old cavalry saddle off a rack, and brushed off the
cobwebs. He selected one of the horses, threw a blanket over its back, then
saddled and bridled it.

The horse stamped a front hoof, uncomfortable at the almost
forgotten feel of a saddle, but Sigmund led it out of the stables and into the
dark drill yard. He mounted and spurred the horse out of the barrack gates and
into the quiet streets. The horse’s hooves were loud on the cobble stones.

“Open the gates!” he shouted and the spearmen hurried to
obey, despite their confusion.

Sigmund spurred the horse out along the Kemperbad Road. The
horse whinnied as it started to trot. Here and there, when there was a break in
the trees, he caught glimpses of the flames. It looked as if the mill building
was on fire, and he could make out flames on the east side of the house.

Sigmund felt the wind sweep his hair back from his face. He
spurred the horse on, felt the old horse begin to remember its days as a cavalry
mount—and stretch its stride. The nightmare stayed with him as the horse
galloped on: he had a strong premonition that there was some sinister link
between the stones and the beastmen and the attack on the mill: but what it was
exactly, he had no idea.

The Jorg family mill was set atop a long ridge, two and a
half miles along the Kemperbad Road, that lifted it above the surrounding
forests and water-meadows and made it clearly visible from the east gate.

The news that the mill was on fire spread through town like
the plague. The bells of the Chapel of Sigmar began to ring and in the Crooked
Dwarf inn, Guthrie Black sat up in alarm.

He had no idea if this meant that the beastmen were
attacking.

“losh!” he called and the young lad sat up from the mattress
where all Guthrie’s sons slept.

“I have to go out,” Guthrie said, but his stomach felt hollow
as he pulled on his boots and fastened his belt around his expansive waist. It
was easy to decide to join the free companies in the light of day: but now, at
night, when the bells were ringing, it was a different matter entirely.