Forged in Battle (24 page)

“I need more men!” he roared but Sigmund had none. “Fall your
men back in order to the barricades!”

Sigmund grabbed Frantz and gave him the same orders. “Back!”
he shouted above the chaos and din of battle. “Eel Street!”

Frantz nodded and took twenty-seven in all back down the
street. The gateposts snapped and through cracks in the gateway Sigmund could
see the monstrous bull-men, their bodies splattered with human entrails and
gore. He felt the spirit of the men begin to waver and stood up to give the
order.

“Fall back!” he shouted. “Fall back to the old wall!”

Someone grabbed his forearm and Sigmund almost cut the man
down—but it was Blik Short—with a dirty bandage around his thigh. There was
such a din it was almost impossible to make the words out. “We will cover your
retreat!” he shouted.

“No—fall back!” Sigmund bellowed, and hurried onto the next
group of men.

As the men of Helmstrumburg fell back, beastmen scrambled
over the broken palisade and charged in—striking left and right. Instead of an
orderly retreat men dropped their weapons and started to flee. The beastmen
struck them down as they ran, and the whole retreat threatened to turn into a
rout until Osric rallied twenty of his men with Baltzer drumming the retreat.
They formed a bottleneck across the end of Eel Street and presented a thicket of
iron blades.

On Altdorf Street, Sigmund managed to rally enough men to
block the top of the street. They battled the beastmen that came streaming
through the shattered gateway. As he fought, Sigmund saw the minotaurs that had
shattered the gate push through their way through the crowd of beastmen.

The men he had rallied began to scream in terror at the size
of the creatures and Sigmund thought he would lose control of his troops until
he saw a squad of men stride out through the chaos and stand across the path of
the bull-men like a wall.

Blik Short limped into place across the top of Altdorf Street
keeping in step with the ten men he had left. The bull-men saw them and raised
their huge axes and charged.

“Hold fast!” Blik shouted but his men needed no orders.
Between them these veterans had seen a hundred battles, and survived. If this
was to be their final battle then it was a good way to die. The men of the Old
Unbreakables gripped their swords and shields and readied themselves.

This was a good day to die.

Under cover of the Old Unbreakables, Sigmund managed to cover
the retreat of the men to the barricades on Altdorf Street.

Osric’s men slowly retreated down Eel Street, where the
banner of the Helmstrumburg Halberdiers flew. The men of Gunter’s squad cheered
Osric’s men as they fell back and then scampered through a hole that had been
left in the barricade.

The beastmen thought they had been pursuing the halberdiers,
but suddenly they were faced with a barricade over eight feet tall, bristling
with halberds and handguns. Vostig gave the order and his handgunners fired—shredding the front rank of beastmen. Twenty spearmen then burst out from the
houses behind them and fell upon the beastmen. The surrounded attackers barely
had a chance to raise their weapons in defence before they were cut down.

On Tanner Lane Gaston stood with twenty halberdiers covering
the retreat of the men that fled from the palisade. A few halberdiers from
Osric’s company joined them, but the men of the free companies did not stop
running until they were behind the barricade—but it was far from finished.

Gruff Spennsweich had refused to join any of the free
companies, determined to stand and protect his daughters: but events had
spiralled beyond his control and there were shouts in the street—as men fled
from the palisade.

Gruff ran to the front door. He could see men running down
the street and the horned heads of beastmen running down from the Altdorf Gate.
He ran inside and fetched a wood axe. “Out!” he shouted and his girls ran out
into the street as Gruff stood in the road to cover their retreat.

Valina dragged the twins out and they ran down the road—civilians and free company all streaming back behind the barricades—while
Gaston’s men blocked the advance of the beastmen. Gruff had one thought—to
protect his daughters, and even as Gaston’s men pulled back, Gruff stood in the
street, lashing out at any beastmen that came within reach.

“Get back!” Gaston shouted, and he tried to pull the farmer
back, but Gruff shook him off. He had been driven from his fields and now he
refused to be driven anymore.

Valina could see her father in the street. She turned and
shouted for him to run away but he stood in the street, keeping three beastmen
back with sheer ferocity and blind courage. But as he fought, a huge creature
came behind him and struck him on the base of his neck. There was a spurt of
blood and the farmer fell, his body quickly lost to view under the trampling
hooves of the beastmen.

To the herds of beastmen the narrow streets seemed like
tunnels. People barricaded themselves into their houses, or hid upstairs and
hurled stones, pots and even pieces of furniture down onto the startled beastmen
from the upper storeys.

Bewildered for a moment by the tunnel of houses and the hail
of missiles that rained down on them, the beastmen’s attack started to falter,
allowing the last defenders time to scramble to safety. But it didn’t take the
beastmen long to react to their new circumstances, and they started going from
house to house, battering down doors and falling on the trapped populace with
claw, horn and blade.

The screams of the dying chilled the defenders at the
barricades, but they were forced to endure the savage spectacle for nearly half
an hour, as living people were flung from the upper windows to the waiting packs
of hounds below, who fell on them with horrific hunger, tearing them apart
before the helpless defenders.

Vasir looked away as an old man and his wife were lowered
from the upper windows of their house. The old man was wearing a nightgown, his
wife was half-naked. He was calling on Sigmar, but she was screaming
incoherently. Just inches below them the snouts of the jumping hounds gnashed
and slavered—but the beastmen suspended them just out of reach and the pack of
hounds started to bite and snap at each other in their excitement.

“They’re doing this for sport!” Vasir cursed, and cursed the
fact that he had used up all his arrows.

“They’re worse than animals,” Hanz said but none of them went
out to help. They stood helpless. Some made the sign of Sigmar. When the old man
and his wife were dropped into the pack, Hanz and Vasir looked away but they
could not stop their ears. The screams were mercifully short, but the horrific
sounds of slavering and rending lasted for nearly a minute.

On Eel Street only Edmunt stood atop the barricade and
watched the whole grisly spectacle, Butcher in one hand and the banner of the
Helmstrumburg Halberdiers in the other.

He devoured each detail, remembered each scream, the face of
each Helmstrumburger that died at the hands of these creatures. His stony glare
did not shy away from even the most horrific of details. Each horror would be
returned, he vowed silently, each death paid for ten-fold.

Butcher swung back and forth as he warmed up his wrist.
“There is a lot of work to do today,” he told the heavy axe head, and the smile
of sharpened steel flashed in the sunlight.

When the beastmen had cleared the last defenders from the
houses, they surged up Altdorf Street, the charge led by the slavering hounds
that bounded up and onto the barricade, snapping and tearing at the defenders’
throats.

Hanz held his shield in front of him and braced his
spear-butt under his foot. The static spear blade caught a hound full in the
chest, and the momentum of its leap impaled the beast, but even as the blade
drove deep into its organs, its snapping jaws closed with a snap onto his
forearm.

Hanz let out a horrified yelp of pain as the razor-sharp
fangs sliced through skin, flesh and bone. He dropped his shield in horror,
seeing his right arm ending in a bleeding stump. Another hound leapt over the
barricade and caught him full in the throat. Hanz flew back into the crowded
defenders, the spined hound still goring at his exposed neck. The men of the
free companies fell back in horror but Sigmund leapt forward with sword drawn
and stabbed the loathsome creature three times before it died.

Sigmund kicked it away from Hanz but the Vorrsheimer’s throat
had been ripped out, the only thing keeping his head onto his shoulders was a
few blood-smeared vertebrae.

It was a testament to the discipline of the Vorrsheimers that
they held the initial assault and the death of their sergeant, but at the
crucial moment that Hanz was punched from the line, Edmunt stepped forward,
Butcher lashing out to left and right: spraying blood and brains over defender
and attacker alike.

The beastmen shied back from him: cowed by the ferocity of a
warrior who was not afraid to die: another child of the forests, meeting
wildness with wildness, ferocity with hatred. Behind the fury of his onslaught,
the line of spearmen held their footing and drove the last few hounds back. As
the beastmen struggled to clamber up to them, there was a hedge of shields and
spear blades against them.

Sigmund led the men on Altdorf Street, the halberdiers
lashing out at the leaping hounds, until blood ran down their shafts and stuck
to their hands.

No one spoke, their breaths came in ragged gasps as their
arms began to hang from their shoulders. Sigmund stabbed and cut, but a shard of
a shattered sword caught him on the brow and opened up a cut, and within moments
the streaming blood began to blind him and he fell back.

“Water!” Sigmund shouted as he tried to wipe the blood from
his eyes. He felt firm hands guiding him back, away from the barricade, and then
a cool wet cloth wiped away the blood and renewed his sight.

“Osric!” he said in astonishment, but the sergeant would not
look him in the eye, and turned and hurried back to the barricades. A short fat
man ran to Sigmund and started to lead him back to the crude field station in
the front room of a nearby inn. It was Fat Gulpen, the town crier—his fat face
now topped with an ill-fitting steel cap.

Sigmund shook him off. “It’s just a scratch! Bind it up!”

There was a stinging pain as Fat Gulpen started to wrap a
dirty cloth around his head.

“Hurry!” Sigmund snapped. “I need to get back!”

While the barricades on Altdorf Street and Eel Street held
the initial onslaught, the charge of the hounds on Tanner Lane drove the men
there from the barricade, and they began to stream back to the second line.

The daughters of Gruff Spennsweig helped to drag wounded men
back, but one man that Valina was helping was caught by the foot by a spined
hound, whose skin was splitting to reveal ribs. She screamed and let go of the
man. The hounds fell on him and in an instant he was hidden by the snarling
pack.

As she ran, Valina felt something hold her back. She
screamed, turned and saw the same spined hound had clamped its jaws upon her
skirts. She yanked and the dress tore and she was free. She started to sprint
back towards the second barricade but felt jaws clamp themselves onto her left
ankle. She tripped and fell and put her hands over her head, but the gesture was
futile. For an instant she was aware of fetid breath and paws as the creatures
leaped onto her—and then she screamed.

* * *

On Tanner Lane, Gaston grabbed running men and forced them to
stand and fight. As dying men screamed it looked as if the whole retreat might
collapse into chaos, but he managed to rally twenty men to hold the street.

After the hounds came the beastmen, clambering over the
abandoned barricade, and charging.

The spiral-horned creature that had cut down Gruff picked out
Gaston and charged. Gaston saw the raised axe and felt an incredible calm. This
is it, you are going to die, a voice in his head said, just make sure you take
him with you.

Gaston looked like a hero of old, with his long moustaches,
as he drew his sword and stood ready. The axe went up for the killing blow and
Gaston leapt forward, driving his weapon into the face of the spiral-horned
creature. All the force from his legs was transferred onto the point of the
sword and the spiral-horned head jerked backwards and was almost torn from the
body.

The blade caught the creature just under the chin and
punctured the soft under-tissue of the creature’s neck and palate, snapping its
jawbone and spraying yellow teeth into the air. The blade carried on through the
beast’s upper palate and went straight into the brain, buckling only as it hit
the massively reinforced skull. But Gaston held his ground and the creature’s
skull snapped free of its spine and the war-axe flew forward without aim or
direction.

The men began to rally and soon Gaston’s forlorn hope had
strengthened to nearly forty men; they retreated to the second barricade in four
ranks.

Freidel stood shoulder to shoulder with Gaston. He was one of
the few men to still have his halberd in his hand. He kept the creatures well
back, but as he stabbed his blade into the neck of a creature that was crawling
towards Gaston he felt a searing pain in his leg, stumbled and fell.

Gaston tried to reach down and drag the wounded halberdier
back under the protective hedge of blades but before he could, three beastmen
dragged the wounded man out of his reach and fell on him.

Freidel’s screams only silenced when they tore his chest open
and tore out his heart. A moment later they had twisted his head from his
shoulders and hurled it back at the retreating men.