Forged in Battle (25 page)

When they felt the Tanner Lane barricade behind them, Gaston
could feel the discipline of the men behind him begin to falter as they turned
and scrambled for safety. There was no one to cover their backs and a number of
men were pulled back down and cruelly slaughtered.

Only the courage of Gaston and the men with him allowed so
many to get back onto the barricade and then farm-lads with pitchforks covered
their retreat, penning the beastmen back like animals as Gaston—the last—clambered onto the barricade to safety.

On Eel Street, Butcher struck again and again, until the
beastmen paused before coming near Edmunt, but the weight of numbers was almost
overwhelming. Men were stumbling back from the front line and collapsing from
exhaustion. Women gave out water and such little food as they could find, but
there was no way so few defenders could hold back such a flood.

The tightly thronged herds began to part and the human
defenders could see terrible creatures start to push their way into the top of
Altdorf Street: things that had crawled straight from the world of nightmares—Chaos spawn.

Sigmund stood silently behind the lines, assessing the
situation then he called to Strong-arm Benjamin. The burly black-haired man ran
over.

Sigmund pointed. “See that building there?”

There was a tall thin house, the second and third floors of
which over-hung the street. Benjamin nodded.

“Find a way in and set the place on fire!”

The street between the barricade and the house in question
was full of baying beastmen. “How?” Benjamin asked.

“Through the houses!” Sigmund said, and Benjamin understood.

He took his twenty smithy men and clambered up to the top
floor of the house next to them. It was a lodging house, with many doors and
simple wooden steps leading up to the third floor, where the rooms had sloping
ceilings.

Clothes were scattered on the floor. The occupants had fled.
The blacksmiths began to pound at the plaster wall. Their heavy hammers made
short work of the plaster and wattle walls, and soon there was a round hole that
was large enough for them to duck through.

Benjamin’s men went from attic to attic, leaving ragged holes
in each wall, until they reached the house that Sigmund had indicated. The
second and third storeys hung well out over the street. If they were discovered,
the beastmen would find a tunnel all the way to the defenders’ barricade. But
for the fire to catch hold it would have to be on the ground floor.

Benjamin had two of his men gather lanterns from the deserted
rooms as he stole a glance from the upstairs window. The street was black with
bodies, the palisade seemed like a cliff holding back a stormy sea. The Chaos
spawn were moving inexorably through the beastmen and Benjamin realised with
horror that they eating their way through the goatmen.

Benjamin led two of his men down the stairs, listening for
the tell-tale sound of hooves—but the house appeared to be deserted.

As they came down onto the first floor the banners of the
beastmen were hanging in front of the windows. The air was thick with beastman
musk. Their hearts pounded in their chests.

On the ground floor the lattice windows had been shattered.
Beastmen were jostling each other, eager to get to the fighting on the palisade.
But their attention was all focussed forward—none of them noticed the men in
the houses just yards to the side.

Benjamin held the lantern in his hand. He gestured to the
other men and they began to pour oil over the beams and timbers of the house.

Benjamin crept to the front room and unscrewed the flask he
had, and shook it over the overturned furniture. But as he did so there was a
pungent scent of roses.

Scented oil! He cursed and looked with alarm at the beastman,
and for a second he was sure that he had escaped. But the noses of the beastmen
were far more sensitive than his. The sudden draft of scented oil made a number
of them turn and they bleated with shock and delight at seeing a human inside
the building. Within seconds there were three beastmen chasing Benjamin through
the rooms then the front door swung open and a stream of beastmen charged in,
their hooves skidding on the smooth tiles.

Benjamin reached the bottom of the stairs and realised that
there was no way he could escape. Shaking the last of the scented oil over the
stairs, he smashed the lantern on the banister and held it to his chest.

The oil caught flame and Benjamin screamed as he charged
forward, a living torch. The beastmen skidded and slipped in their panic as the
fiery apparition ran towards them—then the whole ground floor went up with a
whumpf!
of hot air—and they were incinerated in the inferno.

As the battle raged Josh raced back and forth along the old
stone wall between Altdorf Street, Eel Street and Tanner Lane. There were ten
young lads relaying messages from Sigmund to Gaston and Edmunt.

Captain Jorg was calm as he listened to each breathless
report. He issued orders calmly but deliberately.

“Gaston has fallen back to the second barricade,” Josh said
and Sigmund nodded and shouted to Guthrie, who stood at the back of the lines
with his Crooked Dwarf Volunteers. They were a sorry-looking band of warriors,
but they were all he had left. “To Tanner Lane!”

Sigmund looked back to see what was happening in Altdorf
Street and saw the house that Benjamin had gone to suddenly erupt in flames. A
wave of panic spread through the beastmen and the pressure on the front line
eased.

The flames began to lick up the front of the house, and soon
the whole bottom floor was aflame. The fur of those closest to the flames began
to crinkle and singe. Two of the Chaos spawn had been driven off, but one—with
blue spined legs like a spider that helped drag its bloated body forward, seemed
oblivious to the heat and kept onwards, its skin blackening and bubbling as its
watery insides started to bubble and boil. The intense heat drove the rearmost
attackers back, while those at the front were trapped. They pressed forward,
desperate to escape the heat and soon the beastmen at the foot of the barricade
were so tightly packed that they could not even swing their weapons or even
raise their shields.

Elias stabbed again and again, but the beastman below him
refused to fall.

“He’s dead!” the man next to him shouted. “They’re too
tightly packed for the dead ones to drop!”

As the inferno increased the heat was so intense that
beastmen at the back of the press went berserk and began to attack their
comrades in an effort to escape the heat. The fur on their backs blackened and
began to smoke. Suddenly, the upper storey crashed down in a tumble of burning
timbers. The whole front of the house toppled right across the road, burying the
spawn, and killing many of the beastmen and cutting off about fifty beasts that
were still fighting at the barricade.

Sigmund drew his sword and pushed through the startled
defenders.

“Charge!” Sigmund yelled and suddenly the attackers were
beset by a mob of furious men: halberdiers and free companies and handgunners
all mixed. The terrified beastmen began to bleat in terror. Some tried to hide
inside the buildings, a few tried to run through the burning ruins, one or two
making it to the other side as flaming torches—their fur and skin peeling back
from their bones as they roared their agony.

* * *

The flames quickly spread and soon houses were alight on
Tanner Lane and Eel Street. In the next half an hour three more houses toppled
as the flames spread from houses to house and Altdorf Street and Eel Street were
impassable.

Only Tanner Lane offered the beastmen a chance to close with
the enemy. Men stumbled back from the fighting and staggered towards a makeshift
field station that the apothecary, Gustav, was running in the front room of a
merchant’s house.

There was a queue of wounded men lying on the pavement
outside. Beatrine helped to drag wounded men back from the barricades. Floss
held the men down as Gustav inspected the wounds.

“Get some rest,” Gustav said to two young men whose wounds
were beyond help—and they were piled in the corner of the room and given a
little kirsch to soothe their passing.

The next man that was lifted onto the former dining table was
a halberdier whose arm had been almost severed by an axe cut. Gustav nodded to
Floss and the other helpers and they held the man down: a leather strap over his
forehead pinning his head to the table.

Gustav reached for his knifes, already dripping blood and
began to sharpen them. “You’ll be losing this arm,” he said to the soldier who
nodded and bit his mouth shut.

Gustav cut quickly and cleanly about an inch above the cut,
cleared the twitching muscles away from the bone that had shattered and was
oozing bloody marrow.

“Saw!” Gustav said. Floss handed him the saw then shut her
eyes as the apothecary lowered it to the man’s arm and began to saw.

The second barricade on Tanner Lane was not as high or as
formidable as the others, but at least the lane was not much wider than a single
cart. The fighting here was bitter and merciless. A pile of beastman bodies
began to pile up outside the barricade, while Beatrine and her sisters helped
drag the wounded men away.

Gaston didn’t know how he could continue to lift his sword—when the burning houses began to shed charred timbers and the beastmen seemed to
sense that they would be cut off and retreated.

Gaston watched them leave, until the street was empty except
for a carpet of twitching beastmen. The men did not dare to pursue, the flames
were so intense that there was no way through. They collapsed where they were
and Guthrie sent some men to bring beer from his inn. They came back ten minutes
later with a barrel strapped to the back of a mule and the men passed the steins
around, drinking deeply.

As the men rested Floss took a knife from the table side and
clambered over the barricade. She had been driven from her home. Her father and
her elder sister had been killed. She bent over the first wounded beastman. It
was small, not much larger than a boy, with soft brown fur with a dark stripe
down its back. Except for its fanged mouth, its face had a strange, almost
feline softness to it. It had been stabbed in the chest, and its breathing was
coming slowly and raggedly.

Floss’ skirts were knotted up. She could feel the heat of
the burning house on her left cheek as she bent over the wounded animal and cut
its throat.

The next beastman saw what had happened and struggled to get
away. When Floss knelt at the side of its horned head, the creature bared its
teeth to frighten her away, but she had seen more blood that afternoon than most
soldiers. The vertical pupils of the beastman struggled to see what she was
doing—then the knife kissed its throat and its hot blood spurted over Floss’
hands.

On Altdorf Street, Sigmund ordered a third line of barricades
to be built and men and women worked frantically to empty their houses of every
scrap of furniture, piling it up across the street. They barricaded the doors of
their houses and knocked passages through the upper floors so the street would
become a death trap for the hordes of wild animals should they break through.

When he had given his orders, Sigmund clambered up on the old
stone wall and hurried the thirty yards to Tanner Lane.

The lane was clogged with dead bodies. The barricade was
lined with exhausted men. “The lions of Tanner Lane!” Sigmund dubbed them and
the men gave weak smiles.

Sigmund recognised Guthrie and grinned. “You made a warrior
after all!”

“I will never fight again,” Guthrie said with a smile. “I
only ask Sigmar to save me today!”

When Sigmund got to Gaston he laughed out loud and embraced
the man.

“Last time I saw you, you were on the palisade!”

Gaston smiled weakly. He had lost almost all of the men here—and he hardly knew how he had survived himself.

“Sigmar blessed me!” he said.

When Sigmund got to Eel Street the air was much lighter.
Everyone had a handful of stories to tell about how they had escaped and they
were recounting them, laughing with the shock and relief that they were still
alive.

“Captain Sigmund!” a voice shouted and Sigmund turned and saw
Theodor. The merchant’s pistols were blacked with powder and he had a tear in
his jacket where a knife had narrow missed disembowelling him. He saw the cut on
Sigmund’s forehead and blanched. “You should not be in the front rank! You’re
the only hope these people have!”

“There’s two hundred men fighting here. Each one is hope for
Helmstrumburg.”

Theodor took hold of Sigmund’s arm. “Believe me! Your men are
deserving of the highest praise, but you cannot hold the beasts of the forests
forever. They will find a way to come around the defences. And when they do—their hounds will eat well!”

Sigmund’s lip curled in disgust at his talk, but then it
struck him that the man was right. They had weathered only the first storm.
These beastmen were not driven by any sane desires. They had a single purpose
that had smouldered for a thousand years: to drive the humans from the town.

“These creatures are driven by a force older than
Helmstrumburg. But we might destroy their unity if we destroy the herdstones!”

“How can we do that?” Sigmund demanded. “I have no men to
spare and it would take a hundred men a day to destroy those stones!”

“Did you get my note?”

“What note?” Sigmund frowned.

Osric he realised what they were talking about and grinned
sheepishly. Four barrels of blackpowder would have made a nice packet, but if it
saved the lives of his men then it was probably worth it.

“Is this about four barrels of blackpowder?” he said.