Forged in Battle (27 page)

They moved quickly and quietly, grabbing their weapons, while
Frantz and his dockers grabbed the precious firkins and hefted them onto their
shoulders.

Instead of going over the ridge, Sigmund led his men along
the river bank, where the bushes and trees would offer them as much cover as
possible. When they reached a patch of ferns Sigmund signalled them all to get
down. He could see the beastmen guards, and recounted fifteen.

The hooded figure was still capering around the top of the
mound. It was hooded and bent, and gave the impression of being incredibly old.
But contrary to this, the thing leaped round the stones with a strange agility
and purpose, as if it were performing some arcane ritual.

Sigmund’s mouth went dry. He had no doubt that he had to stop
the ritual, but he also had to get close enough to allow them to kill the
sentries without an alarm being sounded.

Without winds to fan them, the fires in the town had died
down by late afternoon. Without the cover of the burning buildings, Edmunt and
his men returned to the Eel Street barricade, eight more beastman heads hanging
from their belts.

When they had slipped through the hole that the defenders had
made in the barricade, each man dropped the heads onto the floor. The horns
knocked against each other, gory necks dripped fresh blood, glassy eyes stared
blindly up at the crowd of horrified onlookers. Some of the women started to
cry, but the men stared at the things—not so much with hatred, but the certain
knowledge that every beastman had to die, or the men and their families would.

Edmunt looked exhausted, but he was unable to rest. When he
wanted to shut his eyes the face of the woman in the Blessed Rest came back to
him, skinned and still living, and he touched the haft of Butcher at his belt.

The blade was dulled now, and he sat down, accepted a tankard
of ale and a hunk of bread, and ate as he took out his whetstone and sharpened
the blade into a smile.

As the fires died down it was only a matter of time until the
beastmen attacked again. Edmunt had posted sentries high up in the buildings by
the barricades and a boy shouted down, “They’re coming!”

There were shrieks of terror from some of the women, while
the men took up their weapons with a weary resilience.

Sigmund crawled through the ferns until he was within ten
feet of the nearest sentry. The beastman leant on its spear as it turned its
snout back and forth sniffing the breeze. There was a stink of musk. Sigmund
loosed his sword in its sheath. He was so close he could see the flies that were
crawling around the creature’s eyes. It stamped its hoof. The flies flew up into
the air and it swatted at them with its hand. The mix of human and animal was
horrifying, as if the wild beast had been mixed with the worst of human
emotions: hatred, violence, and lust.

Sigmund had his sword out. He drew his feet up under him,
ready to leap up.

The flies continued to buzz around the creature and it
swatted them again. Sigmund leaped from the ferns, his sword a whirlwind of
death as it struck the head from the beastman guard, and kept running as he
struck the next down.

Behind him the whole river bank rose up in anger. The
beastmen bleated in shock as twenty men leapt up, their swords dealing death to
the left and right. Osric gutted one beastman and lopped the arm off another,
forearm and hand still gripping the knotted club as they all flew into the air.
Then Osric paused to drive his sword through the wounded beast’s heart.

Baltzer kept behind Osric and caught one creature on the back
of the neck, his sword snagging as it caught in its spine.

Theodor’s first shot hit a beastman under the chin and
snapped the horned head back violently. The second hit another beast in the
shoulder and it swirled as it fell, to have its throat cut as it lay helpless.
The remaining beastmen ran to the base of the mound to protect their shaman.
There was a ferocious struggle as the men tried to cut their way through—but
even in death the beasts clutched the blades of the men of Helmstrumburg.

Sigmund could feel the air begin to crackle with energy as
the shaman’s voice rose in pitch, but even as his hair began to stand on end
Stephan broke through the wall of fighting and roared as he charged the hooded
spirit-charmer. It was only the roar that alerted the shaman to the danger. It
turned and saw an Empire soldier charging towards it, spear held ready to thrust
through its heart.

The shaman brought up the skull rattle and there was a clap
of thunder. An invisible force struck Stephan in the chest, ripping open his
ribcage and flinging him back onto the floor: pulsing heart exposed to the sky.

As Osric and his men struggled to cut down the last of the
beastmen, Sigmund saw the shaman step up to the broken body of the spearman and
reach down.

“No!” Sigmund shouted, but Stephan’s body spasmed and the
shaman stood with his forearm dripping blood, and a pulsing heart clenched in
his fist.

Sigmund cut the last beastman down, ran up the slope and
grabbed the fallen Vorrsheimer’s spear, and hurled it at the cackling shaman.
The steel head seemed to hang in the air before it struck the shaman full in the
chest. Its body spasmed as a foot of steel impaled it. Bloody froth poured from
the creature’s lips, its goat-legs buckled and it fell to the ground. Its rattle
cracked with the impact, and human teeth fell out.

As the foul creature died, one of the beastmen in the
clearing put a horn to its lips and raised the alarm.

“Blackpowder!” Sigmund shouted, and Frantz and his dockers
sprinted up. At any moment there could be hundreds of beastmen charging through
the trees. They used their knives to crowbar the firkin lids off, then placed
one at the base of each of the four standing stones and then began to uncoil the
fuse.

Already the first beastmen were streaming back to the
standing stones. Sigmund screamed at Osric to block their approach.

Osric and his last ten men grabbed spears and shields from
the fallen beastmen and spread out to cover the men working furiously at the
mound. The first beastmen to arrive seemed to have been scattered in the forest.
They did not come all together, but singly and without order.

Osric and his men formed a ragged screen, parrying and
blocking the desperate blows of the beastmen who saw the dead body of their
shaman and attacked with new ferocity.

Sigmund ran over the mound, trailed a fuse, then he suddenly
tripped and fell into a hole that the beastmen had been digging. He gasped with
shock when he saw that at the bottom of the hole, next to his right foot, was
the enormous skeleton of a long-dead human warrior. A horned helm had slid
across the skull’s face, scraps of cloth and armour had fallen through the
collapsed bones. In its right hand the skeleton held an ancient broadsword,
rimed and green with age, and in its left the old brass boss of a wooden shield,
the thick linden timbers rotted away.

Sigmund felt a chill run down his back. The treasurer’s book
had said how Ortulf Jorg was buried with all the men who had fallen that day.
This giant must be the man who killed the beastman leader a thousand years ago—and now Sigmund was here, destined to fight their leader himself.

And this, perhaps, was his ancestor.

Sigmund stared at the bones, as if looking for some sign or
feature that he might recognise—but there was nothing. He heard a desperate
shout and looked up to see Osric and his men fighting a desperate battle to hold
back the berserk beastmen. He ran down the slope and fumbled to ram the fuse
into the hole in the firkin. As he worked, he could feel the power of the stones
as they began to hum, and his head hurt so much he could barely concentrate.

“The lantern!” Sigmund shouted and Frantz’s face went ashen
as he realised that they had left it in the ferns.

Frantz began to sprint off, and Sigmund saw one of Osric’s
men being cut down, the beastman leaping over the dead man and charging Sigmund.

Sigmund’s sword hummed as he drew it. He took three strides
forward, catching the creature at the base of one of its horns, slicing deep
into its skull, but the creature ran full into him, and its momentum knocked him
clean from his feet. Sigmund heard a gunshot and then another. He kicked the
dead beast off, and was up, sword ready, when he saw Theodor, fumbling with the
wheel-lock of his pistols as he reloaded.

Sigmund scrambled to his feet, but instead of charging, the
beastmen hung back. Sigmund thought that perhaps the death of their shaman had
broken the creatures’ resolve, and the battle was over—but then he heard a
roar that sounded like a bear. Through the silent tree trunks strode an albino
giant, curled ram’s horns spiralling down to its throat, shoulders that bulged
with a primal ferocity.

The creature swung a two-headed axe from hand to hand. Over
its chest was the crudely fashioned breastplate of some vanquished knight,
battered out of shape and looking almost toy-like strapped onto the large chest
of the beastlord.

Schwartz ran at the creature, but a swing of its fist sent
the man flying, his neck broken and his head swinging uselessly on the shattered
spine, staying at a twisted angle as he lay dead.

“Back!” Sigmund shouted to Osric and his men. “Get back!
There’s no point you fighting it,” he told them. “It wants me!”

Osric’s men turned away and the sergeant dragged a wounded
man with him, lest he should fall into the hands of the beastmen. They stumbled
as they ran, through the standing stones, past Sigmund towards the bushes.

The albino beastman paused at the edge of the standing
stones. Its fur was white from head to hoof and the only colouring was its pink
eyes, which blinked painfully in the light. The beast opened its mouth and
roared with pleasure at the prospect of killing the one that was foretold.

Sigmund said his prayers to the gods as the creature took a
step towards him. Sigmund could feel the weight of the creature as its hoof
stamped down, then pointed its axe and seemed to speak in some crude language.

Sigmund gripped the sword hilt two-handed to stop his fingers
from shaking. His only thought was how he might wound this beastman before it
struck him down. As the creature took another step forward there was the
deafening shot of a pistol to the left—but Theodor’s aim was poor and the
first shot either missed or had no effect.

“He’s mine!” Sigmund shouted, but Theodor drew his sword and
strode up to the creature and fired again. This shot hit the creature in the
thigh causing a red stain to spread over the white fur. It raged with fury and
turned to face off against the second attacker, pink eyes blinking with anger.
It ran at Theodor and swung its axe, but he leapt out to the side and stabbed
the creature high on the shoulder at the base of its neck.

The beastman leader charged Theodor again and twice more he
caught it with precise stabs in the shoulders, as if goading the beast to an
insane rage, but on the third run the cunning creature feinted a charge to the
left. Letting go of the axe shaft he caught the tail of Theodor’s jacket and
even as he tried to pull away, the beastlord dragged him into his deadly grasp.

Theodor looked like a child in the clawed grip of the monster
as it flung him to the ground then grabbed his feet and picked him up.

Theodor’s face was contorted with terror. Sigmund dropped his
sword, grabbed a fallen halberd and stabbed it into the knotted muscles of the
beastman’s back, but the blow seemed to have no effect on the enraged creature.

It swung Theodor round in a deadly arc and then brought his
body down against one of the standing stones. There was a sickening crack as the
man’s spine snapped and his head exploded with the impact, splattering brains
and blood over the stones.

Sigmund stabbed at the creature again. It was occupied with
the dead body, goring it against the stone, ripping Theodor’s inert body apart,
and covering its horns and brow with gore. It was so consumed with animal hatred
that even when Theodor’s body was little more than a broken mess of flesh it
still butted and gored and bit.

“Hey!” Sigmund shouted and only another thrust of the halberd
brought the creature’s attention away. It blinked the blood from its eyes and
seemed to realise that the man it had caught was dead.

As Theodor’s mangled corpse fell to the ground, the massive
beastman turned to Sigmund and charged.

Sigmund jabbed at it in much the same way as Theodor had
done. The halberd gave him a much longer reach: he goaded the beast and then
danced back a couple of steps.

The beastman ran at him a couple of times, and each time it
did Sigmund was ready for a feint or a sudden swerve. The creature paused to
catch its breath and then suddenly ran at Sigmund, head down to butt him.
Sigmund was caught unawares and the sharp point of the horn caught him on the
left thigh. He let out a strangled gasp of pain as the blunt horn opened a
ragged cut up his hip and he only just escaped the reach of its claw.

Sigmund dragged his foot as he struggled up the mound, using
the halberd as a prop to keep him upright, and the beastlord halted and snorted
with satisfaction. It scented fear and weakness. Now the hunter had become the
hunted.

Sigmund got to the top of the mound and it struck him how
fitting it was that he would die here on the spot that his forebear was buried.
As he felt warm blood running down his leg he felt a stab of disappointment that
he had failed to kill the beast.

Edmunt and Gunter would save the people of Helmstrumburg.
They were no longer his care.

For a moment he had an image of the town: burning as its
people were slaughtered in the streets, the wild beasts tearing them apart. He
put his hand to his belt to draw his sword, but the scabbard was empty. He had
dropped his weapon in the fight at the base of the mound. And the halberd was
now his crutch. Without it he could barely stand. He was defenceless.